Los Angeles Times: 'We Are Humans Too': Voices Of UCLA's Striking Custodians, Hospital Aides And Imaging Technicians
This week, thousands of UC employees are staging a three-day strike for better pay and working conditions. On Monday, more than 20,000 custodians, cooks, lab technicians, nurse aides and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 walked off their jobs. By Tuesday, two more unions joined in sympathy strikes. The union and UC reached a bargaining impasse last year. The university has said it won’t meet the workers’ demands. (Resmovits, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: UC Labor Strike Expands With Show Of Support From More Unions
Fong Chuu is a registered nurse who has assisted with countless liver transplants, kidney surgeries and gastric bypasses during 34 years at UCLA. Working with her are scrub technicians who sterilize equipment, hand medical instruments to the surgeon and dress patient wounds. They are a team, Chuu says, which is why she walked off her job Tuesday in support of those technicians and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The 25,000 member AFSCME local, the University of California's largest employee union, launched a three-day strike Monday. (Watanabe, 5/8)

Sacramento Bee: UC Strike Day 2: Nurses March With Strikers At UC Davis Medical Center
Roughly 1,400 workers picketed for a second day at the UC Davis hospital and campus on Tuesday, as two unions representing nurses and physical therapists, social workers and dietitians went on strike in sympathy with members of AFSCME 3299. ...Combined, the three unions have about 10,000 members at UC Davis and 53,000 system-wide. (Sullivan and Anderson, 5/8)

KQED: UC Nurses, Hospital Staff Join Service Workers' Strike
Striking University of California service workers got reinforcements Tuesday, as nurses and technical staffers joined them on the picket lines outside medical centers around the state. ...Negotiations between the university system and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 broke down after more than a year of bargaining. (Dillon, 5/8)

Capital Public Radio: California Hospitals, Officials Take Careful Steps To Minimize Patient Impact During UC Labor Strikes 
Nurses across the University of California system are striking this week to support janitors, technicians and other hospital workers demanding higher wages and better health care. But patients aren’t likely to notice much difference in care. The California Nurses Association joined the strike at the UC Davis Medical Center on Tuesday, filing into the picket line with two workers’ unions that started a day earlier. (Caiola, 5/8)

In other news —

Sacramento Bee: Sutter Health Employees Testify They Were Denied Breaks
At hearings unfolding this week and next week at the California Labor Commissioner's Office, Sutter Health employees testified that they were not able to take meal breaks or rest breaks because of chronic understaffing in their departments at Sutter’s Capitol Pavilion Surgical Center in midtown Sacramento. In total, about 30 employees at the Capitol Pavilion Surgery Center are requesting thousands of dollars in compensation for both meal and rest breaks that they say they were forced to miss. (Anderson, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: Patients Sue Gilead, Saying Drug Company Intentionally Delayed Safer HIV Medicine
Two Southern California men filed suit against Gilead Sciences on Tuesday, saying they were harmed when the drug company intentionally delayed development of a safer version of a crucial HIV medicine so that it could continue to profit from its lucrative monopoly. The lawsuit — and a similar case that seeks class-action status — says that Gilead executives knew as early as 2000 that the company's scientists had developed a less toxic form of its HIV medicine tenofovir that was less harmful to patients' kidneys and bones. (Petersen, 5/9)

In other pharmaceutical news —

The San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego's Hybritech Still Influences Local Biotech, 40 Years Later 
When Hybritech was sold for $450 million in 1986, its executives and investors became rich. This spawned San Diego’s biotech ecosystem, a self-perpetuating cycle of growth, acquisition, and more growth. While the company has long passed from the scene, the DNA of Hybritech and its people remain firmly embedded in San Diego’s large biotech community, 40 years after its founding. ...Today San Diego County’s life science sector employs nearly 50,000 people and generates $33.6 billion in economic activity, says a report last year from San Diego-based Biocom, the life science trade group for California. Local life science research centers and companies also brought in more than $832 million in National Institutes of Health grants to San Diego during the 2016 fiscal year. (Fikes, 5/9)

The Wall Street Journal: California Counties Jump Into Opioid Litigation
As lawsuits over the opioid crisis have spread nationwide, the country’s most populous state has largely stayed on the sidelines. Now, 30 counties in California are jumping in, seeking recovery for alleged taxpayer losses from the major makers and distributors of opioid painkillers. The counties, largely centered in the rural northern and central regions of the state, are each filing lawsuits in federal court. The actions will likely be sent to a federal judge in Ohio, who is overseeing hundreds of opioid lawsuits filed across the country. (Randazzo, 5/8)

KPCC: Rats, Roaches, Bedbugs, Mold: Why Thousands Of LA's Homeless Shelter Beds Sit Empty Each Night 
A KPCC investigation found reports of bedbugs, rats, foul odors, poor lighting, harassment, lax care in medical wards and even a “chicken incubator” in a room where homeless people were sleeping. Public documents — including monitoring reports from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), health department inspections, coroner reports, surveys from the Department of Mental Health and police reports — reveal safety and sanitation problems in shelters around the county. (Palta, 5/9)

In other news —

Orange County Register: 60 Former Riverbed And Civic Center Homeless To Be Treated, Housed Under New $1.6 Million Contract 
Sixty of the most vulnerable homeless people recently dislodged from the Santa Ana Civic Center and riverbed tent cities will be targeted to be moved into permanent housing under a new $1.6 million contract approved Tuesday, May 8, by the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The program will focus on treating and housing homeless people suffering from drug-abuse problems and mental illness – a group Supervisor Todd Spitzer called the “most difficult of the difficult” to help. (Graham, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: Experts Have New Advice On Prostate Cancer Screening. Here's Why They Put It Back On The Table
In a shift that puts early detection of prostate cancer back on the agenda of middle-aged men and their doctors, a federal panel of experts is recommending that men ages 55 to 69 weigh the potential harms and benefits of prostate cancer screening and judge whether getting tested feels right to them. A recommendation issued Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force judged the "net benefits" of screening these men for prostate cancer to be small. But the panel said the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, test should be offered to them "based on professional judgment and patient preferences." (Healy, 5/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Congress Leery Of Trump’s Cuts To Children’s Health Program
President Donald Trump’s proposal to roll back $7 billion from the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program drew immediate bipartisan concern Tuesday, an indication of the hurdles the effort to cut federal spending will face in the Senate. The proposed cuts to the children’s health program quickly emerged as the most contentious element of Mr. Trump’s request that Congress rescind about $15 billion in funds that had been previously authorized but not spent. “It is a red flag with me,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) said of the proposed CHIP cuts, noting she was reviewing the proposal. “I’ve been a big proponent of CHIP from the beginning. It’s vital to our state.” (Peterson, 5/8)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: CDC Boss Gets $165,300 Pay Cut From Record-Setting Salary
The new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has gotten a big salary reduction. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that Dr. Robert Redfield Jr.'s new salary will be $209,700, down from $375,000. The previous figure was at least $150,000 more than any previous CDC director had received. (5/8)

The Hill: Schumer: Dems Will Be 'Relentless' In Attacking GOP For Premium Hikes
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Democrats are going to be “relentless” in attacking Republicans for looming ObamaCare premium hikes as Democrats seek to harness the issue for the midterm elections. Schumer pointed to proposals that have been released in recent days showing double-digit premium increases for next year, with insurers citing the GOP repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate among the factors driving up premiums. (Sullivan, 5/8)

The Associated Press: Drug Supply Firm Execs Say They Didn't Cause Opioids Crisis
Top executives of the nation's leading wholesale drug distributors told Congress under oath Tuesday that their companies didn't help cause the nation's deadly opioid epidemic, drawing bipartisan wrath that included one lawmaker suggesting prison terms for some company officials. The confrontation came at a House subcommittee hearing at which legislators asked why huge numbers of potentially addictive prescription opioid pills had been shipped to West Virginia, among the states hardest hit by the drug crisis. Lawmakers are making an election-year push for legislation aimed at curbing a growing epidemic that saw nearly 64,000 people die last year from drug overdoses, two-thirds from opioids. (5/8)

The Associated Press: House Panel OKs Plan To Grow VA Private Care, A Trump Pledge
A House committee approved a wide-ranging plan Tuesday to give veterans more freedom to see doctors outside the Veterans Affairs health system and fix a budget crisis in its troubled Choice private-sector program, a major step toward fulfilling President Donald Trump's promise to expand private care options. The $51 billion plan includes $5.2 billion to avert a catastrophic shutdown of Choice. The program is slated to run out of money as early as May 31, causing disruptions in medical care to tens of thousands of patients. (5/8)

The New York Times: Valeant, Distancing Itself From Its Past, Will Change Its Name To Bausch Health
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, the company whose enormous price increases on old drugs helped fuel public outrage over high drug costs, is changing its name, the company announced Tuesday. The new name will be Bausch Health Companies, to reflect the company’s better-known and more respected subsidiary, the eye care company Bausch + Lomb, which it acquired in 2013. The company announced the change, which will take effect in July, as part of its first-quarter earnings. (Thomas, 5/8)

Stat: Can Precision Medicine Do For Depression What It's Done For Cancer?
The idea of precision medicine for depression is quickly gaining ground — just last month, Stanford announced it is establishing a Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness. And depression is one of many diseases targeted by All of Us, the National Institute of Health campaign launched this month to collect DNA and other data from 1 million Americans. Doctors have been treating cancer patients this way for years, but the underlying biology of mental illness is not as well understood. (Thielking, 5/9)