- Courts 2
- First In A Flood Of Cases Over Roundup Weed Killer's Possible Link To Cancer Goes To Trial
- Judge Deals Administration Legal Setback, Ruling It Can't Indefinitely Detain Immigrant Children
- Sacramento Watch 1
- Nurse-Patient Ratios, Expanded Paramedic Duties, Dialysis Rules All On Agenda For Upcoming Legislature Session
- Hospital Roundup 1
- San Diego A Hotbed For Movement Championing Patients' Rights To See What Doctors Write About During Visit
Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Health Insurers Struggle With Sudden Freeze On ACA Payouts
The Trump administration suspended a program over the weekend that helps stabilize the health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, prompting some insurance companies to warn of higher premiums. ( )
More News From Across The State
First In A Flood Of Cases Over Roundup Weed Killer's Possible Link To Cancer Goes To Trial
Dewayne Johnson, who used the product in his job as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014 at the age of 42. He read the label carefully and even contacted the company over a rash he developed, but he says that he was never warned about the possibility it could cause cancer.
The Associated Press:
First Trial Over Roundup Weed Killer Cancer Claim Under Way
Lawyers for a school groundskeeper dying of cancer asked a San Francisco jury on Monday to find that agribusiness giant Monsanto's widely used weed killer Roundup likely caused his disease. Dewayne Johnson's lawsuit is the first case to go to trial among hundreds of lawsuits saying Roundup caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Johnson sprayed Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, at his job as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, according to his attorneys. (7/9)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Does Roundup Cause Cancer? Patient’s Case Against Monsanto Goes To Trial In SF
The case of a Benicia groundskeeper who claims he developed terminal cancer as a result of using the herbicide Roundup went to trial Monday in San Francisco Superior Court, the first of what could be a flood of cases accusing the agricultural giant Monsanto of distributing deadly poison and trying to cover it up. (Fimrite, 7/9)
Judge Deals Administration Legal Setback, Ruling It Can't Indefinitely Detain Immigrant Children
The Justice Department had made a request to modify a 1997 legal settlement that set rules for how the government can deal with immigrant children in its custody. But Judge Dolly M. Gee says there's no basis to amend the consent decree.
The New York Times:
Judge Rejects Long Detentions Of Migrant Families, Dealing Trump Another Setback
The Trump administration on Monday lost a bid to persuade a federal court to allow long-term detention of migrant families, a significant legal setback to the president’s immigration agenda. In a ruling that countered nearly every argument posed by the Justice Department, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles held that there was no basis to amend a longstanding consent decree that requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days. The government said that long-term confinement was the only way to avoid separating families when parents were detained on criminal charges. (Jordan and Fernandez, 7/9)
Los Angeles Times:
Judge Rejects Trump Administration Bid To Indefinitely Detain Immigrant Children With Parents
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee issued an order lambasting the Justice Department for its request to modify a 1997 legal settlement that set rules for how the government can deal with immigrant children in its custody. Calling President Trump’s executive order on immigrants “ill-considered,” the judge accused the administration of attempting to shift blame to the courts for a crisis of Congress’ and the president’s making. Gee’s order came as Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge in San Diego they would miss Tuesday’s deadline for authorities to reunite parents and children younger than 5 who were forcibly separated at the border. (Kim and Davis, 7/9)
Politico:
Judge Rejects Trump Request To Alter Agreement On Release Of Immigrant Kids
"Defendants seek to light a match to the Flores Agreement and ask this Court to upend the parties’ agreement by judicial fiat," wrote Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "It is apparent that Defendants’ Application is a cynical attempt ... to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate." (Gerstein, 7/9)
Also on the docket: a bill that would require doctors on probation for egregious reasons to inform their patients, and a measure that would let medical laboratory technicians perform procedures currently handled by clinical laboratory scientists.
Sacramento Bee:
Five Health Care Bills That Affect CA Health Care Workers
Among the hundreds of bills on the Legislature's agenda for August are ones that would make key changes in the lives of California health care workers. Here are five to watch. (Chen, 7/10)
As technology advances, doctors' scribbles during a patient's visit are as well. This has led to a push for patients to actually be able to see what those notes are. Hospitals in San Diego are at the forefront of the movement.
The San Diego Union-Tribune:
What's Your Doctor Writing About Your Visit?
Earlier this month, UC San Diego announced that doctor notes will be automatically published to its online patient portal for about 30 percent of its patients in primary care, internal medicine, family medicine, urology, hematology and oncology. Others are even further along. Scripps Health started automatically adding notes for patients seen at Scripps Green Hospital in Torrey Pines and for its main medical groups in April 2017. Kaiser Permanente began making most doctor notes available through its information portal for most specialties in October 2017, and Rady Children’s Hospital went live for its medical center and main affiliated medical group on March 4. But veterans have everybody beat. According to Cynthia Butler of VA San Diego Healthcare System the HealtheVet system available to all veterans has made notes available since January of 2013. (Sisson, 7/9)
In other hospital news —
Ventura County Star:
Community Memorial Hospital Contractor Takes Blame For Delays
The contractor building the new Community Memorial Hospital said he pays a $10,000 daily penalty because of repeated delays in a project once expected to open three years ago. General contractor Fred Kummer, owner of HBE Corp. in St. Louis, said he will finish the 250-bed project in Ventura and turn it over to Community Memorial on Aug. 17, triggering a training, stocking and regulatory approval process expected to take four months. Hospital leaders project the new tower will open to the public by the end of the year. When groundbreaking was held seven years ago, leaders predicted the project would be completed by March 2015. (Kisken, 7/9)
In Effort To Retain Doctors In San Joaquin Valley, Fresno To Get UCSF Branch Medical School Campus
The hope is that students will stick around and take jobs in the medically needy valley after they graduate from their programs.
Fresno Bee:
Fresno To Be UCSF Branch Medical School Campus
Fresno will have a branch campus of the UCSF School of Medicine under a plan to train medical students and retain them as doctors to serve residents in the medically needy San Joaquin Valley. UCSF students enrolled in the San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education will spend 18 months at the University of California at San Francisco medical campus and them move to Fresno for the remaining years of their training. The training program, known as SJV PRIME, has been based at UC Davis School of Medicine but UCSF received approval recently to take it over. The transfer opened the door for UCSF to establish a branch medical school campus in Fresno. (Anderson, 7/9)
In other news across the state —
The Mercury News:
Inmate With "Health Issues" Dies At Main Jail
A 53-year-old man in custody at Santa Clara County’s main jail who was being treated for “several health issues” was found dead Sunday night in a single-person cell, according to the sheriff’s office. The man, whose name was not released as of Monday afternoon, was found at about 7:33 p.m. while deputies and medical staff were dispensing medication to inmates, the sheriff’s office said in a press release. (Gomez, 7/9)
The Desert Sun:
Palm Desert Man Guilty Of National Health Care Fraud.
A Palm Desert man agreed to plead guilty to tax fraud charges for his part in a massive health care kickback scheme uncovered in late June by the Department of Justice in a sting the agency called Operation Spinal Cap. The Department of Justice announced in a June 28 press release that federal prosecutors in southern California filed new charges against 33 defendants, alleging $660 million in fraudulent billing, the latest in a still-unfolding nationwide health care fraud investigation. (Damien, 7/9)
KQED:
An Oakland Community Grocery Store Feeds Its People
Adrionna Fike is a worker-owner at the cooperative Mandela Grocery Cooperative in West Oakland. ...Adrionna Fike had always dreamed of owning a neighborhood store selling good food that resonated with the community and held a particular concern for African American life. (Henry, 7/9)
Trump Nominates Brett Kavanaugh For Kennedy's Open Seat, Despite Ties To The Bush White House
At the nomination ceremony, Judge Brett Kavanaugh said that his “judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”
The New York Times:
Brett Kavanaugh Is Trump’s Pick For Supreme Court
President Trump on Monday nominated Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a politically connected member of Washington’s conservative legal establishment, to fill Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court, setting up an epic confirmation battle and potentially cementing the court’s rightward tilt for a generation. (Landler and Haberman, 7/9)
The Washington Post:
Trump Supreme Court Pick: Brett Kavanaugh
“In keeping with President Reagan’s legacy, I do not ask about a nominee’s personal opinions,” Trump said in an announcement in the East Room of the White House. “What matters is not a judge’s political views but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require. I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.” (Costa, Barnes and Sonmez, 7/9)
Los Angeles Times:
Brett Kavanaugh, A Washington Veteran, Is Trump's Second Pick For The Supreme Court
During the White House ceremony in which Trump named him, Kavanaugh declared that his “judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.” Critics said beneath that rhetoric is a highly conservative, partisan lawyer. Kavanaugh's extensive record in Washington will provide the opposition with ammunition. In the late 1990s, Kavanaugh played a lead role in the aggressive investigation of President Clinton led by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. He was an author of the Starr Report, which urged the House to impeach the president for lying about a sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. (Savage, 7/9)
The Wall Street Journal:
President Trump Chooses Brett Kavanaugh For Supreme Court Vacancy
The prime-time announcement required Mr. Trump to set aside misgivings about Judge Kavanaugh’s ties to the George W. Bush administration that Mr. Trump has frequently criticized, according to people familiar with the process. He also restrained an impulse to make a flashier choice, these people said. Mr. Trump settled on the pick after a rapid-fire search that opened on June 27, when 81-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy told the president he was stepping down, creating the second vacancy on the court during Mr. Trump’s presidency. (Radnofsky, Nicholas and Kendall, 7/10)
Politico:
How A Private Meeting With Kennedy Helped Trump Get To ‘Yes’ On Kavanaugh
After Justice Anthony Kennedy told President Donald Trump he would relinquish his seat on the Supreme Court, the president emerged from his private meeting with the retiring jurist focused on one candidate to name as his successor: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Kennedy’s former law clerk. Trump, according to confidants and aides close to the White House, has become increasingly convinced that “the judges,” as he puts it, or his administration’s remaking of the federal judiciary in its conservative image, is central to his legacy as president. And he credits Kennedy, who spent more than a decade at the center of power on the court, for helping give him the opportunity. (Cadelago, Cook and Restuccia, 7/9)
The Washington Post:
Who Is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Nominee?
Brett M. Kavanaugh, the federal judge nominated by President Trump on Monday to the Supreme Court, has endorsed robust views of the powers of the president, consistently siding with arguments in favor of broad executive authority during his 12 years on the bench in Washington. He has called for restructuring the government’s consumer watchdog agency so the president could remove the director and has been a leading defender of the government’s position when it comes to using military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects. (Marimow, 7/9)
The Washington Post:
Kavanaugh Supreme Court Nomination: Conservative Pick Will Need Senate Confirmation
Kavanaugh is likely to be far more conservative than Kennedy, who was known as a swing vote on the court. These ideological estimates of the current justices and Kavanaugh are based on the Judicial Common Space system developed by political science researchers Lee Epstien, Andrew D. Martin, Jeffrey A. Segal and Chad Westerland. The scores take into account the voting patterns of Supreme Court justices and a combination of factors for judges of lower courts, including clerkships and the political affiliation of the nominating president. Based on these scores, Kavanaugh would be on par with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas at the conservative end of the court. That’s assuming he’s confirmed by the Senate, which can be a long process. (7/9)
The Associated Press:
A Look At Supreme Court Nominee Kavanaugh's Notable Opinions
Here are summaries of some of [Kavanaugh's] notable opinions. (7/10)
Politico:
Republicans Brace For Brutal Supreme Court Fight
Mitch McConnell and his Republican Caucus are enthusiastic about the prospect of filling a Supreme Court vacancy before the midterm elections. But they don’t deny the enormity of the task at hand. (Everett and Schor, 7/9)
Politico:
Senate Swing Votes Prepare For SCOTUS Onslaught
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) were under intense scrutiny even before Trump tapped Kavanaugh, a veteran appeals court judge. But they quickly began feeling the pinch as more than a half-dozen prominent liberals in the caucus joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in opposing Kavanaugh as a hard-line conservative minutes after the nomination was rolled out — even as the White House and Senate Republicans began trumpeting the nominee as a “mainstream” pick. (Schor, 7/9)
Politico:
Anti-Abortion Groups Rally Around Trump’s SCOTUS Pick
“I have great hope that ... now there may be five judges to allow states under the authority of the 10th Amendment, to enact their own [policies] into law on the abortion issue,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. Kavanaugh has passed up opportunities in legal opinions to stake out a position on the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. And some conservative critics before the announcement raised fresh concerns about comments he made 12 years ago pledging to follow Roe, calling it the “binding precedent of the court.” (Cancryn, 7/9)
NPR:
Kavanaugh Nomination Sparks Partisan Uproar On Abortion Rights
Outside groups on both sides of the debate over abortion rights immediately issued predictions about what the nomination would mean for the future of Roe v. Wade. Dana Singiser, the vice president for public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told reporters Monday night, "The right to access abortion safely and legally in this country is clearly on the line." Anti-abortion-rights activists do not disagree. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the conservative Susan B. Anthony List, told reporters on a press call that the nomination of a fifth conservative justice is the culmination of years of work getting Republicans elected to all branches of government. (Snell, 7/10)
"The U.S. strongly supports breast feeding but we don't believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty," President Donald Trump tweeted. Meanwhile, experts criticized any attempts to undermine breast-feeding.
The Associated Press:
Trump Says US Had Opposed Formula Limits, Not Breastfeeding
The U.S. opposed a World Health Assembly resolution to encourage breastfeeding because it called for limits on the promotion of infant formula, not because of objections to breastfeeding, President Donald Trump tweeted Monday. Trump criticized The New York Times for reporting that U.S. officials sought to remove language that urged governments to protect, promote and support breastfeeding, along with language calling on policymakers to limit the promotion of food products, such as infant formula, that can be harmful to young children. (7/9)
The New York Times:
Trump Stance On Breast-Feeding And Formula Criticized By Medical Experts
The Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to water down an international resolution supporting breast-feeding go against decades of advice by most medical organizations and public health experts. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls human breast milk the “normative standard” for infant feeding, and recommends that mothers breast-feed their babies exclusively for six months. “Breast-feeding is one of the most cost-effective interventions for improving maternal and child health,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. (Rabin, 7/9)
The Washington Post:
U.S. Effort To Weaken An International Breast-Feeding Resolution Has A Long History
An aggressive effort by U.S. officials to weaken an international resolution to promote breast-feeding this year is the latest example of the government taking an industry's side in global public health, advocates said. This spring, U.S. officials threatened negative trade consequences for Ecuador if the country introduced a resolution to the World Health Assembly to encourage breast-feeding, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. That person said there had been significant lobbying of U.S. representatives in Switzerland by the infant-formula industry over the issue. Ecuador's Ministry of Health did not reply to a request for comment. (Johnson and Erickson, 7/9)