Los Angeles Times: California Would Bar Organized Tackle Football Before High School Under New Bill
California would become the first state to prohibit minors from playing organized tackle football before high school under a proposal made Thursday by lawmakers concerned about the health risks. Just days after the Super Bowl, Assembly members Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) and Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) said they are introducing the “Safe Youth Football Act,” legislation that will be considered this year by state lawmakers. (McGreevy, 2/8)

In other news from Sacramento —

The Bakersfield Californian: 'Everybody Wants Things To Change': San Joaquin Valley Residents Head To Sacramento, Demanding Lawmakers Invest In Their Communities 
Imagine a place where people turn on their faucets and the pipes spit out contaminated water. Or the air pollution is so thick that it causes asthma. A place where the top grossing industry pays its workers wages so low that many struggled to survive. For many living in parts of the San Joaquin Valley, they don’t have to imagine. It’s the crushing reality they face every day — and policy makers and state advocates are beginning to notice. Organized by The Center at Sierra Health Foundation, thousands of San Joaquin Valley residents — hundreds of them from Kern County — rose early, loaded onto buses and took the long ride to the state capitol in Sacramento Thursday, demanding lawmakers begin passing policies that improve health outcomes in their communities. (Pierce, 2/8)

California Healthline: Sacramento Postcard: Residents Rally For A Healthy Valley
Yang Vang, a Hmong refugee living in Merced, suffers from severe joint pain. She becomes sick with worry when she hears her Medi-Cal coverage might be in jeopardy, and she has battled suicidal thoughts because of it. Rosalba Villanueva, a farmworker of 10 years who lives in Bakersfield, broke her wrist six months ago when she slipped and fell in a vineyard. Her employer covers medical bills related to the accident, but her other health needs often go unmet because she is undocumented and uninsured. (Ibarra, 2/9)

Orange County Register: Death In Rehab Generates $7 Million Award 
The Reyna tragedy sprang from several problems plaguing the “Wild West” of addiction treatment in California, attorneys said: Potentially life-threatening withdrawal is allowed in non-medical facilities here, even while it is forbidden in other states. In an effort to make money from insurance payments, centers routinely make big promises about levels of care that they are simply not equipped to provide — to get “heads in beds,” as it is known in the industry — and state inspectors can’t keep up with it all. (Saavedra and Sforza, 2/8)

Sacramento Bee: Use These Apps To See ZIP Codes Where Flu Is Raging In Sacramento Area
Mobile apps and websites allow people to track common illnesses, including influenza, right down to the ZIP code – and sometimes even street – where the sickness was reported. In the case of DoctorsReport.com, founder Dan Shaw said he culls information from physicians. (Anderson, 2/8)

KQED: How Families In San Joaquin County Pay For Coroner Mistakes 
The alleged mishandling of death investigations in San Joaquin County inflicted distress and extra costs on grieving families, wasted county resources and potentially impeded prosecutions — according to two forensic pathologists who quit performing autopsies for the sheriff-coroner last year. A KQED investigation into those allegations confirmed that the coroner’s office, under Sheriff Steve Moore, released the wrong bodies to families in 2016 and 2017, and once lost track of a body in the morgue for months. (Small, 2/8)

In other news from across the state —

Capital Public Radio: California Nurse Puts Face On Billboards To Push Back Against ‘Abortion Reversal’ Science
A largely unstudied procedure intended to reverse pill-induced abortions is again causing an uproar between pro-choice and pro-life health care providers. ...There’s been very little scientific research on whether this actually works. The doctor who invented the procedure did find that it preserved pregnancy for most of his own patients. (Caiola, 2/8)

The Press-Enterprise: California Family Sues Starbucks, Alleging They Were Served Blood-Tainted Drinks
A Redlands family claims a bleeding Starbucks barista tainted their drinks with blood in 2016 and left them with gnawing fears that they might contract a blood-borne disease, according to a lawsuit filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court .Blood tests for communicable diseases, including HIV, initially proved negative, but the lawsuit claims family members experienced “extreme distress” for months, including from the coffee giant’s seeming lack of care about their well being, according to the suit filed Jan. 30. An emailed statement from the Starbucks media relations team stated, “We are aware of this claim, that allegedly took place in 2016, and are prepared to present our case in court.” (Wesson, 2/8)

The New York Times: House Passes Budget Deal To Raise Spending And Reopen Government
The House gave final approval early Friday to a far-reaching budget deal that will reopen the federal government and boost spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, hours after a one-man blockade by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky delayed the votes and forced the government to close. With the House’s approval, before dawn and Friday’s workday, the government will reopen before most Americans knew it closed, with a deal to provide $300 billion in additional funds for this fiscal year and next to military and non-military programs, disaster relief for the victims of last year’s hurricanes and wildfires, and a higher statutory debt ceiling. (Kaplan, 2/8)

The Washington Post: Government Shutdown Set To End As House Passes Sweeping Budget Bill
The 240-to-186 House vote came just after 5 a.m., about three hours after the Senate cleared the legislation on a vote of 71 to 28, with wide bipartisan support. (DeBonis and Werner, 2/9)

The New York Times: From Clinics To Child Insurance, Budget Deal Affects Health Care
The budget deal in Congress is billed as a measure to grant stability to a government funding process that has lurched from crisis to crisis — but it is also stuffed with provisions that will broadly affect the nation’s health care system, like repealing an advisory board to curb Medicare spending and funding community health centers. Many of the provisions have been in gestation for months, even years in some cases. Some will save money. Many will cost money — potentially a lot of money. (Pear, 2/8)

The Washington Post: 12 Of The Most Important Things In Congress’s Massive Spending Deal
Some Democrats are calling this deal a win because it gives a “historic” boost to nondefense spending. Overall, domestic spending would rise by $60 billion this fiscal year and $78 billion the following year. (Long and Stein, 2/8)

Politico: Congress Votes To End Government Shutdown
“What makes Democrats proudest of this bill is that after a decade of cuts to programs that help the middle class, we have a dramatic reversal," added Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who helped craft the deal along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and House leaders. "Funding for education, infrastructure, fighting drug abuse, and medical research will all, for the first time in years, get very significant increases, and we have placed Washington on a path to deliver more help to the middle class in the future.” (Bresnahan, Scholtes and Caygle, 2/8)

The New York Times: Budget Deficits Would Balloon Under The Bipartisan Spending Deal
According to a preliminary analysis of the deal, federal deficits would surpass $1 trillion by 2019, a level not seen since the recession and its aftermath. (Parlapiano, 2/8)

The Hill: Popular Bill To Fight Drug Prices Left Out Of Budget Deal
Drug pricing advocates are decrying the budget deal announced Wednesday for leaving out a bipartisan drug pricing measure that they had pushed for. The measure would prevent branded drug companies from using delay tactics to prevent cheaper generic competitors from coming onto the market. (Sullivan, 2/8)

San Jose Mercury News: Single-Payer Best Cure For California Health Care
Only 39 percent of Americans can cover a $1,000 unexpected medical bill without incurring significant debt. Medical costs were the largest single contributor to increasing the number of people falling into poverty. With the Trump administration’s and Congress’ assaults on the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid, it’s about to get worse. (Malinda Markowitz, 2/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: SB562 Puts Newly Expanded Health Care In California At Risk
Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, California has cut its uninsured rate by more than half. We have helped real patients receive quality, consistent health care and literally saved thousands of lives in the process. Lawmakers in California now have a tremendous responsibility before them: to figure out how to provide care for low-income people, and to keep medical care affordable for millions of middle-class families.The gains of the last several years are under attack, threatened by efforts in Washington, D.C., to repeal the Affordable Care Act and by those in Sacramento who are pushing SB562, a version of single-payer health care that is simply not practical and puts the health of millions of Californians at risk. (Theresa Ullrich, 2/5)

Los Angeles Times: With The Opioid Epidemic Raging, San Francisco Takes A Smart Gamble On Preventing Overdoses
With the opioid epidemic raging and thousands of people dying from overdoses annually, four Democrats in the California Legislature proposed a controversial but potentially effective response: letting a handful of counties experiment with safe injection sites. At these government-sanctioned centers, drug users could bring illicit controlled substances to inject in a clean space with clinical supervision to guard against lethal overdoses. (2/8)

Sacramento Bee: Mentally Ill Californians Shouldn’t Die On The Street, Untreated. The Law Must Change
Nick Petris had the best of intentions a half century ago when he lent his talent and clout to the law that bears his name, and that to this day governs how California cares for – and too often fails – its mentally ill. A legislator who represented Oakland and Berkeley for 40 years ending in 1996, Petris set out to end the “tyrannical and oppressive system of incarcerating people so easily” in the state hospital system, which at its height warehoused 36,853 people. But as he recounted in a 1989 oral history, the law “went overboard.” (2/8)

Los Angeles Times: Banning Tackle Football For Kids? There's Nothing 'Nanny State' About It If The Science Is Sound
[L]egislatures in New York and Illinois are zeroing in on a different aspect of the nation's most popular sport: brain injuries among young [football] players. Lawmakers in both states have introduced measures that would ban tackle football for children under age 12. Making kids wait longer to don pads and helmets is not a bad idea, nor would it be a bad choice to extend such limits to other sports, such as hockey, lacrosse and boxing, where children as young as 8 strap on gloves and protective gear and punch each other in the head. (2/2)

San Jose Mercury News: Heart Screening Scan Should Be Available To All
We recently learned some of the details of President Trump’s 2018 physical examination. His exam included a Coronary Artery Calcium CT scan, the same type of scan that Air Force pilots, astronauts and senior military officers have long been given as a tool in determining fitness for duty. ...This early detection allows for the implementation of effective preventive medications and strategies. ... As leaders involved in the California Right Care Initiative public-private partnership that works to speed lifesaving medical advances to benefit the general public, we wonder, why can’t this easy and relatively inexpensive ($150) test that is used by certain members of our society — presidents, pilots and astronauts to name a few — be made available to the general public to better guide their treatment? (David Maron, William Bommer and Stephen Shortell, 2/8)

Los Angeles Times: Why Do Poor Americans Eat So Unhealthfully? Because Junk Food Is The Only Indulgence They Can Afford
The verdict is in: Food deserts don't drive nutritional disparities in the United States the way we thought. Over the past decade, study after study has shown that differences in access to healthy food can't fully explain why wealthy Americans consume a healthier diet than poor Americans. If food deserts aren't to blame, then what is? (Priya Fielding-Singh, 2/7)

Sacramento Bee: Blaming Home School For Perris Child Torture Is Like Blaming Trenchcoats For Columbine
Last month, a malnourished 17-year-old girl escaped a house in the inland Southern California town of Perris and called the Riverside County sheriff using a purloined cellphone. She reported her brothers and sisters were being held captive by their parents in squalid conditions. The girl was so diminutive, authorities didn’t believe at first the teen was as old as she said. Then the cops walked into a horror show that shocked the nation and the world. The girl’s 12 siblings, ranging in age from 2 to 29, were roped or shackled with chains and padlocks to their excrement-encrusted beds. They were sick, hungry and afraid. Police said the family dogs looked fine, though. (Ben Boychuck, 2/8)