Los Angeles Times: With Obamacare, Fewer Americans Were Uninsured When They Were Told They Had Cancer
As President Trump and his allies in Congress keep pushing to get rid of Obamacare, new research shows that the contentious law has succeeded in expanding health insurance coverage for Americans with cancer. But not everywhere. This upside of Obamacare — known formally as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ACA — was seen primarily in states that participated in the Medicaid expansion that the law made possible. (Kaplan, 10/19)

Los Angeles Times: Scientists Engineer Proteins That Caused Obese Animals To Lose Weight And Lower Cholesterol
As the U.S. obesity rate has galloped toward 40%, doctors, drug designers and dispirited dieters have all wondered the same thing: What if a pill could deliver the benefits of weight-loss surgery, but without the knife? New research brings that hope a notch closer. Scientists from the biotechnology company Amgen Inc. report they have identified and improved upon a naturally occurring protein that brought about significant changes in obese mice and monkeys, including weight loss and rapid improvements on measures of metabolic and heart health. (Healy, 10/19)

Capital Public Radio: Officials Warn Of Toxic Fire Debris
People who lost their homes or had property damaged in the wildfires are being warned to contact their local authorities before sifting through debris. ...California's EPA says ash may contain substances that can cause cancer and people with asthma, the elderly, children and pregnant women should use extra caution. (Schilling, 10/19)

In other news from across the state —

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Safety Net Skilled Nursing Facility Wins National Recognition 
Santee’s Edgemoor skilled nursing facility is among three long-term care centers nationwide to earn the American Health Care Association’s top award. The organization recently announced that the facility on Park Center Drive has received its 2017 Gold National Quality Award which “recognizes organizations nationally that serve as models of excellence in providing high-quality care.” Run by the county Health and Human Services Agency, the 192-bed facility provides 24-hour nursing care and rehabilitation services to patients whose conditions are severe or complex enough that they cannot be served by other skilled nursing facilities in the region. (Sisson, 10/19)

The Associated Press: Bipartisan Plan To Curb Health Premiums Gets Strong Support
A bipartisan proposal to calm churning health insurance markets gained momentum Thursday when enough lawmakers rallied behind it to give it potentially unstoppable Senate support. But its fate remained unclear as some Republicans sought changes that could threaten Democratic backing. (Werner and Fram, 10/19)

The Hill: 24 Senators Co-Sponsor Bipartisan ObamaCare Deal
The bipartisan deal to stabilize ObamaCare’s markets has 24 co-sponsors, Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced Thursday. Twelve Republicans and 12 Democrats signed on to the bill, which would continue ObamaCare's insurer subsidies for two years and give states more flexibility to waive ObamaCare rules. (Hellmann, 10/19)

Los Angeles Times: Senators Push Forward With Bipartisan Obamacare Fix — And Trump's Encouragement
Among those backing the bill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said she not only supports the policy, but the opportunity it provides for Congress to show, "at a time when things are a little tense ... that we can come together. We can demonstrate the ability to govern." (Mascaro, 10/19)

The Hill: Key Senate Republican Warns GOP To Change Course On ObamaCare
Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Thursday told GOP colleagues bluntly that their efforts to repeal ObamaCare have failed and urged them to change course. Alexander said Republicans need to come up with a new path on health care after holding dozens of votes over the years to repeal ObamaCare and always ending in failure. (Bolton, 10/19)

Reuters: Two Republican Senators Seek To Add Flexibility To Bipartisan Health Bill
Republican U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy said on Thursday they were working with Republican Senator Ron Johnson and members of the House of Representatives to add more "flexibility provisions" to a proposed bipartisan bill to stabilize the healthcare insurance market in the short term. (10/19)

The New York Times: Will Mitch McConnell Help His Friend Get A Health Care Deal?
Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander go way back. The two Southern Republicans met in Washington in 1969 when Mr. Alexander was a promising young aide at the Nixon White House and Mr. McConnell an up-and-coming legislative assistant to Senator Marlow W. Cook of Kentucky. The story goes that Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. suggested to Mr. Alexander, his fellow Tennessean, that he should look up Mr. McConnell, that he was a “smart young man and I think you’d like him.” A nearly 50-year friendship and political alliance was born. (Hulse, 10/19)

Reuters: White House Says Rollback Of Obamacare Must Be Part Of Short-Term Fix
A senior White House aide said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump would demand steps toward repealing Obamacare in any healthcare legislation, comments that cast doubt on the prospects for a short-term bill to shore up insurance markets. Marc Short, the White House's top liaison to Congress, said on CNN that Obamacare's mandates and taxes would have to be rolled back and consumers be allowed to more heavily invest in health-savings accounts for Trump to sign off on any congressional deal. (Cowan and Abutaleb, 10/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Support For Bipartisan Health Bill Hinges On Rollbacks Long Sought By Conservatives
“We are certain that it can be improved,” Mr. Alexander said on the Senate floor Thursday. But the White House made clear Thursday that Mr. Trump was seeking more than minor tweaks to the legislation, which would shore up the ACA’s individual insurance markets by extending for two years federal payments known as “cost-sharing reductions” that help insurers offset subsidies they provide to some low-income consumers, while giving states greater say in how the law is implemented. In order for Mr. Trump to support such legislation, it must provide relief from the ACA’s requirement that most people have health coverage or pay a penalty, the spokesman said Thursday. (Armour and Peterson, 10/19)

Politico: GOP To Trump: Stop Flip-Flopping On Obamacare Deal
Key Senate Republicans are urgently trying to get President Donald Trump to reconsider his apparent opposition to a bipartisan deal shoring up health insurance markets, several senators said Thursday morning. Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who negotiated the deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, both spoke to the president about it on Wednesday evening. (Everett and Haberkorn, 10/19)

The Associated Press: Court To Review Ruling Allowing Abortion For Immigrant Teen
An appeals court on Thursday temporarily stayed a judge's ruling that would have allowed a pregnant 17-year-old being held in a Texas facility for unaccompanied immigrant children to obtain an abortion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a short ruling that still allowed the teenager to be taken to a counseling meeting with the doctor who would perform the abortion. Texas state law requires women to receive counseling 24 hours before an abortion. (10/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Appeals Court To Review Case Of Undocumented Teenager Seeking Abortion
In a rare move Thursday, a federal appeals court hastily scheduled an oral argument for Friday morning after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., sharply criticized the administration’s position and ordered it to release the teen to travel to the nearest abortion clinic this week. The government appealed the decision immediately. The appeals court put the court order on hold temporarily so it could consider the case, which raises questions about whether undocumented immigrants in custody have the same constitutional right to an abortion that is accorded to U.S. citizens. (Kendall and Meckler, 10/19)

The Hill: Dems Introduce Bill To Overrule Trump On Birth Control Mandate 
Nineteen Senate Democrats have signed on to a bill that would reverse the Trump administration's new exemption for ObamaCare's birth control mandate. The administration recently announced it will allow most employers to stop providing birth control coverage in their insurance plans if they have moral or religious objections. (Hellmann, 10/19)

In other national health care news —

Politico: Trump Blindsides Advisers With Promised Opioid Plan
President Donald Trump overrode his own advisers when he promised to deliver an emergency declaration next week to combat the nation’s worsening opioid crisis. “That is a very, very big statement,” he said Monday. “It's a very important step. ... We're going to be doing it in the next week.” (Ehley and Dawsey and Karlin-Smith, 10/20)

Stat: Cancer Drug Prices Have Been Rising Much, Much Faster Than Inflation
The prices for injectable cancer drugs — including older medicines that face competition — rose over a recent eight-year period at rates that far exceeded inflation, according to a new study. Specifically, the mean price increase for 24 branded cancer medicines that were approved in the U.S. between 1996 and 2012 was a whopping 25 percent. After adjusting for inflation, the increase was 18 percent. Moreover, gradual price increases over the years can result in substantial cumulative increases. In this instance, the mean cumulative price increase for all two dozen drugs was 36.5 percent. (Silverman, 10/19)

The Associated Press: Study Finds Pollution Is Deadlier Than War, Disaster, Hunger
Environmental pollution — from filthy air to contaminated water — is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015 — about 9 million — could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses — or about 6.2 percent of the global economy. (Daigle, 10/20)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Doesn't Know It, But His Attempt To Blow Up Obamacare Could Help California — And Other States
Trump’s lack of understanding of America’s healthcare system appears to be almost infinite, so it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t grasp the complexities of the cost-sharing reduction payments. But the misunderstandings extend to congressional Republicans, and even Democrats.The truth is that Trump’s action could lead to more Americans receiving subsidized health coverage. It could also produce a windfall for states including California. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/16)

Los Angeles Times: Two Senators Announce A Bipartisan Deal On Obamacare, But Don't Celebrate Yet
n a window into how the U.S. Senate should actually work, two senators — a Republican and a Democrat — announced a bipartisan deal Tuesday to save some provisions of the Affordable Care Act from the Trumpian butcher block. Don’t celebrate quite yet. The window into bipartisan comity is only narrowly cracked open, as yet. The details of the deal are still murky, but plainly it won’t undo some of the damage done to the ACA by the Trump administration over the last nine months. And conservative Republicans are already grousing that it’s too accommodating to a program that has brought health coverage to 20 million Americans. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/17)

Los Angeles Times: The Bipartisan Plan To Shore Up Obamacare Is Anything But A 'Bailout'
A pair of U.S. senators is scrambling to shore up the Obamacare insurance markets, an effort made especially urgent by a series of moves by the Trump administration. On Tuesday they revealed the outlines of a compromise, including an agreement to restore about $7 billion in annual payments to health insurers that the administration recently halted. (10/18)

Los Angeles Times: Who's To Blame If The ACA Blows Up? Trump, Of Course
President Trump still doesn’t get it: He owns Obamacare now. He’s been hard at work undermining the government-regulated health insurance program —eliminating subsidies to insurance companies, slashing programs to enroll new customers, authorizing bare-bones plans to lure healthy patients out of the insurance pool. But if the system collapses, he insists it won’t be his responsibility. “I think the Democrats will be blamed for the mess,” he said on Monday. (Doyle McManus, 10/18)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Has Declared Open War On The ACA. We'll All Get Hurt
The Trump administration has declared open war on the Affordable Care Act. With its abrupt decision to terminate critical subsidies, it has thrown the exchanges into chaos on the eve of open enrollment; it has imperiled the full faith and credit of the United States; and it will cause a massive increase in federal spending. This is no way to run a healthcare system, and no way to run a government. (Nicholas Bagley, 10/13)

Los Angeles Times: Patients Face Tough Choices When A Healthcare Provider Calls It Quits 
Johnson & Johnson announced that it’s closing its Animas subsidiary and getting out of the insulin-pump business, leaving the field primarily to a single large competitor, Medtronic, which will control roughly 85% of the market....The challenges faced by tens of thousands of J&J customers mirror problems all too common in the healthcare industry — the turmoil that can arise when a medical-device or drugmaker halts sales, or when an insurer decides to no longer cover a specific pill, gadget or treatment. (David Lazarus, 10/17)

Orange County Register: Lobbyists Draw Blood With Obamacare’s‘Essential Health Benefits’ 
Are you a pharmaceutical company marketing an expensive new drug to help people quit smoking, a birth control method that costs more than its targeted customers can afford to pay, or an anti-anxiety drug that 300 million Americans need right now? Would you like the government to mandate that insurance policies cover it? The government’s answer is yes! (Susan Shelley, 10/14)

Los Angeles Times: The U.S. Government Can't Hold Undocumented Pregnant Teens Hostage When They Want An Abortion
It is unconscionable that the federal government would so flagrantly undermine the rights of a person in its custody. The girl, known in court papers simply as Jane Doe, may not be here legally, but, while she is here, she has a constitutional right — like every other pregnant girl or woman in the United States — to a legal abortion. Even U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who ruled Wednesday that Doe could get the abortion, shook her head in disbelief when a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer at the hearing would not concede that Doe has constitutional rights. (10/20)

Sacramento Bee: Gov. Brown Betrayed Women With Last-Minute Veto
At around midnight Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown pandered to religious extremists and jeopardized the job security of women across California. In his final act of this legislative session, Brown vetoed a bill that would have ensured that a woman can’t be fired because she decided to get pregnant, use contraception or have an abortion. Assembly Bill 569, the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act, would have banned workplace discrimination due to a woman’s personal reproductive health choices. (Amy Everitt, 10/17)

Orange County Register: California’s Gun Safety Sham
California lawmakers love gun control. Gov. Jerry Brown signed no less than six different bills designed to restrict gun and ammunition sales in the Golden State last year alone, and a number of the leading candidates to replace him as governor are running on a platform of even more regulation.There’s not an aspect of legal gun ownership that isn’t in their crosshairs, so to speak. (John Phillips, 10/18)

Los Angeles Times: A Judge Calls Foul On Allergan's Attempt To Hide Its Drug Patents Behind An Indian Tribe's Sovereignty
In the annals of cynical corporate subterfuges, it would be hard to top the effort by the drugmaker Allergan to fend off a patent challenge by selling its drug rights to a rural New York Indian tribe. ... [Judge William] Bryson didn’t invalidate the tribal deal because that wasn’t at issue in the case before him, but he expressed “serious reservations” about whether the deal should be treated as valid. That could function as a guidepost for the U.S. Patent Office, which will have to rule on the transaction’s validity. Legal authorities say Bryson’s opinion should be taken as a red light by other companies thinking about using the same maneuver. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/19)

The Mercury News: Wine Country Fires Cause Stress; Kindness Helps
Stress is in the air. Between the Napa/Sonoma area fires affecting the whole Bay Area, the devastating recent shooting in Las Vegas, the multiple hurricanes in the southeast, our crazy and bizarre national politics, and, oh yeah, the increasing threat of nuclear war with North Korea, people are really stressed out. (Thomas G. Plante, 10/17)

The Mercury News: How To End Bullying From A Muslim Who Was Targeted
I was in seventh grade when a fellow classmate remarked, “I wonder how skinny Ishaq would be without the bomb strapped to his chest.” Looking back, I understand how this incident, which attacked both my Muslim identity and weight, along with other remarks making ill-informed connections between my faith and terrorism, contributed to alienation I felt as an adolescent. (Ishaq Pathan, 10/16)

Sacramento Bee: California Is Too Friendly To Food Lawsuits
California has long been known as the nation’s breadbasket, but now it’s also becoming notorious as its food lawsuit capital. Lawyers file class-action lawsuits claiming that Starbucks puts too much ice in its iced coffee and too much milk foam in its lattes. They sue over salt and vinegar potato chips allegedly not having enough vinegar, and they sue Krispy Kreme because its donuts supposedly don’t contain real raspberries. (John Doherty and Lisa Rickard, 10/16)

Sacramento Bee: The Food Lawsuits Myth
I was troubled by an op-ed penned by a pair of entrenched participants in the campaign to undercut constitutional legal rights and fatten corporate profits (“Lawyers running amok in California are suing over food,” Viewpoints, Oct. 17). As often happens in the war against U.S. consumers, propaganda was peddled. But the facts are quite different. Let’s start with what the authors claim is a “ridiculous” class-action lawsuit against Nutella, a chocolate-hazelnut spread manufactured by what the authors describe as a “family-run business.” (Tim Blood, 10/19)