San Francisco Chronicle: California’s Proposition 8 Seeks To Cap Revenue At Dialysis Clinics
[Francine] Williams is one of nearly 68,000 Californians on dialysis. That number is expected to grow 5 percent each year as diabetes and obesity, two common risk factors for kidney failure, become more prevalent. It is also a big business — one that major dialysis providers are spending tens of millions of dollars to preserve with their opposition to Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that would cap revenue for California’s dialysis centers. (Ho, 10/11)

Sacramento Bee: California Health Care Workers Authorize Strike
AFSCME Local 3299 announced Thursday morning that the 15,000 patient-care technical workers in its ranks voted to authorize a strike against the University of California after reaching a deadlock in labor contract negotiations. The strike vote received approval from 96 percent of AFSCME 3299 members, AFSCME leaders said, and the patient-care workers will be joined on the picket line by 9,000 employees in AFSCME’s service unit and 15,000 members of the UPTE-CWA union, who voted to join in solidarity. (Anderson, 10/11)

Sacramento Bee: Secret Report Says State Fudging Prison Mental Health Data
The chief psychiatrist for California’s prison system is accusing state officials of providing inaccurate and misleading data to a federal court and to lawyers for prison inmates fighting to improve psychiatric care inside state prisons, according to court documents. Dr. Michael Golding compiled a “lengthy, detailed report” that inmate attorneys say contains “serious allegations” that data reported to the court overseeing a long-running case involving medical and mental health care inside California prisons “is inaccurate and has been presented in a materially misleading way,” court documents say. (Stanton, 10/10)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Typhus Outbreak Adds Fuel To The Debates Over Homelessness And Housing
A man hospitalized for dehydration a few months ago at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center started suffering a severe fever, and doctors weren’t sure why. The patient was homeless, a clue to doctors that he might have typhus. Every year people contract flea-borne typhus in Southern California, mostly in Los Angeles County. Doctors did a blood test. (Karlamangla, 10/11)

Orange County Register: Typhus Fever’s Wild Threat? The Rat-Faced Opossum, Named In Health Advisories As Culprits In Spreading The Disease 
In fact, the opossum was named by public health officials this past week as a main carrier of fleas that transmit typhus fever. The opossum, or possum, is a major contributor to the outbreak in Pasadena, where a record 20 cases have been reported this year as of Thursday, an “elevated level” well above the average of one to five cases per year, according to the city of Pasadena. Los Angeles County is reporting 59 cases of typhus fever so far this year. Of those, nine are associated with an outbreak in downtown Los Angeles and six of those were among people experiencing homelessness, however specific outbreak locations are being withheld by the county. L.A. County Department of Public Health reported on Wednesday that about 60 cases per year is average, so the county is ahead of its yearly rate. (Scauzillo, 10/11)

In other news on the homeless crisis —

San Francisco Chronicle: Southeast Neighborhoods Grapple With RVs — Next Phase Of The Homeless Crisis
More than a dozen camper vans flanked the University Mound Reservoir in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood Tuesday, spreading along University Street, past the antebellum senior center and alongside a row of abandoned greenhouses around the block. To residents who flocked to a neighborhood meeting that night, the vehicles are a source of frustration and a vexing symbol of the city’s inability to solve its homeless crisis. (Swan, 10/11)

Los Angeles Times: $200,000 Grant May ‘Turbocharge’ Laguna Nonprofit’s Goal To Provide 180 Permanent Housing Units For Homeless People By 2020
A $200,000 Bank of America grant announced Wednesday for the Friendship Shelter of Laguna Beach will help “turbocharge” the nonprofit’s goal to provide 180 permanent housing units for homeless people by 2020, the shelter said. Friendship Shelter’s permanent supportive housing program, launched in 2014, currently has 87 units at apartment sites throughout south Orange County, with ongoing support services to ensure people remain housed, the organization said. (Vega, 10/11)

The Washington Post: Premiums For Popular ACA Health Insurance Dip For The First Time
The average price tag for the most popular level of insurance sold in the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplaces is dropping slightly, the first time the rates have stopped going up since the health plans were created a half-dozen years ago. In the 39 states that rely on HealthCare.gov, the monthly premium is dipping by 1.5 percent for 2019 in a tier of coverage that forms the basis for the ACA’s federal insurance subsidies, according to federal figures released Tuesday. (Goldstein, 10/11)

The New York Times: Premiums For Most Popular Type Of Obamacare Plan Will Drop Next Year
“Though the average decrease is small, it is a dramatic and very positive change from the double-digit increases experienced over the past two years,” said Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the online marketplace serving 39 states. From 2017 to 2018, the benchmark rose 37 percent, officials said, and in the prior year it rose 25 percent. (Pear, 10/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Price Of Obamacare Insurance Plans Takes Surprise Drop
The new dynamic could muddle both parties’ political messages. The pattern of more moderate rate increases could hold in future years if the markets remain stable, but it’s uncertain how the spread of plans that don’t comply with the ACA, and the legal challenges to the health law itself, will affect insurer pricing in years to come. The data also confirm that insurers are expanding their presence in the ACA markets, after previous industry pullbacks. (Armour and Wilde Mathews, 10/11)

California Healthline: Obamacare Premiums Dip For First Time. Some Call It A Correction.
Charles Gaba, a Michigan-based blogger who tracks ACA sign-ups, noted that the numbers released by the administration were just one snapshot of the marketplace. He said premiums next year will “still be a whopping 30% higher than they were in 2017, with the vast bulk of that due specifically to sabotage actions taken by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans.” (Galewitz and Appleby, 10/11)

Stat: Insurance Giant Will Require Medicare Beneficiaries To Try ‘Step Therapy’ 
One of the nation’s largest health insurers will use “step therapy” in some of its private Medicare plans next year, requiring patients to try cheaper drugs before pricey biologics and other costly medicines. The decision by UnitedHealthcare is among the first signs that insurers plan to take advantage of a Trump administration initiative that policymakers argue will bring down drug costs for consumers. (Swetlitz, 10/12)

In other national health care news —

Stat: Even As They Scold Drug Distributors, Lawmakers Take Their Campaign Cash 
In this election season, lawmakers are taking on drug distributors with abandon, and many seem to relish the role. “I just want you to feel shame,” one member of Congress said in May to five executives of major drug wholesalers, which are accused of worsening the opioid crisis by dumping thousands of addictive painkillers into small towns. ...In the run-up to next month’s midterm elections, the country’s three largest distributors alone have given nearly $3 million to congressional campaigns. Key lawmakers from both parties — including many of the ones who publicly shamed the companies for their role in the crisis — have accepted the contributions eagerly. (Facher, 10/12)

The New York Times: Most White Americans’ DNA Can Be Identified Through Genealogy Databases
The genetic genealogy industry is booming. In recent years, more than 15 million people have offered up their DNA — a cheek swab, some saliva in a test-tube — to services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com in pursuit of answers about their heritage. In exchange for a genetic fingerprint, individuals may find a birth parent, long-lost cousins, perhaps even a link to Oprah or Alexander the Great. But as these registries of genetic identity grow, it’s becoming harder for individuals to retain any anonymity. (Murphy, 10/11)

The Washington Post: Percentage Of Young U.S. Children Who Don’t Receive Any Vaccines Has Quadrupled Since 2001
A small but increasing number of children in the United States are not getting some or all of their recommended vaccinations. The percentage of children under 2 years old who haven’t received any vaccinations has quadrupled in the last 17 years, according to federal health data released Thursday. Overall, immunization rates remain high and haven’t changed much at the national level. But a pair of reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about immunizations for preschoolers and kindergartners highlights a growing concern among health officials and clinicians about children who aren’t getting the necessary protection against vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, whooping cough and other pediatric infectious diseases. (Sun, 10/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Can Typos Give Insight Into Your Mental Health?
The latest wearable technology can reliably track heart beats and notify users of any irregularities. Up next? Reliably tracking your brain and mental health. A team of researchers at the Center on Depression and Resilience at the University of Illinois at Chicago is working on technology that could monitor users’ mood and cognition—important indicators of mental-health stress—by tracking their typing patterns with an iPhone app called BiAffect. Initial research has found it is possible to predict episodes of mania and depression among users with bipolar and major depressive disorder based on changes in their typing habits. (Higgins, 10/11)

The Washington Post: Scientists Grow Tiny Human Retinas In A Dish
Kiara Eldred sometimes compares her nine-month-long scientific experiments, growing tiny human retinas in a laboratory dish, to raising children. Eldred, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, starts by growing thousands of stem cells and feeding them nutrients and chemicals that will steer them to develop into the retina, the part of the eye that translates light into the signals that lead to vision. After two weeks of painstaking cultivation, those cells typically generate 20 to 60 tiny balls of cells, called retinal organoids. As they mature, these nascent retinas get dirty and slough off lots of cells, so they also need to be washed off when they’re fed every other day — at least for the first month and a half. (Johnson, 10/11)

Los Angeles Times: Obamacare Premiums Are Looking Good. They'd Be Even Better If They Hadn't Been Sabotaged By The GOP
In baseball, the winning pitcher is the one who was on the mound just before his team took the lead for good — regardless of how well he pitched. So a reliever who gets hammered, turning a three-run lead into a two-run deficit, nevertheless will get credit for the win if his teammates retake the lead the next time they’re at bat. Keep that in mind whenever President Trump talks (or writes) about health insurance premiums for Obamacare policies, which are sold to people not covered by a large employer’s group plan. (Jon Healey, 10/11)

Los Angeles Times: Forcing Starbucks To Put A Cancer Warning On Your Coffee Cup Would Violate The 1st Amendment
Coffee is ubiquitous in our society, cancer a horrendous and terrifying disease, and the case is thus of enormous interest in California and beyond. But one aspect of the case has received little public attention: A ruling against the coffee vendors would violate the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Floyd Abrams, 10/11)

Sacramento Bee: Trump Administration Is Working To Reduce Violent Crime
Keeping the American people safe is government’s most important duty. After all, we can’t have a strong economy, an effective education system or a functioning democracy if it is not safe to leave your home or walk the streets of your neighborhood. In recent years, this obligation has taken on even greater importance. From 2014 to 2016, violent crime increased by more than 8 percent nationwide, and murders spiked by 21 percent. The increase in the murder rate in 2015 was the largest one-year increase since 1968. (U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, 10/8)

Los Angeles Times: Battling A California Law, Drug Industry Reveals It May Not Always Have A Good Reason For Price Hikes
It’s proper to observe that there’s considerable doubt that SB 17 will bring down drug prices, and some speculation that it could even lead to price increases — if industry middlemen use the 60-day advance notices to stockpile drugs during the notice period and jack up prices to retailers, or if competing manufacturers use the notices to fix prices on their own products. The industry lawsuit makes these arguments itself. But it’s probably fair to say that the drug industry wouldn’t be mounting this kind of attack on a state law if it thought the law would clear the way for higher prices. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/8)

San Francisco Chronicle: Ex-ER Psychiatrist: More Inpatient Treatment Needed In SF
I sat down with Dr. Paul Linde, who for a quarter-century worked in the psychiatric emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital before leaving to work part-time as a primary care psychiatrist. He described San Francisco’s revolving door for mentally ill homeless people, the shortage of treatment beds and how California’s newly passed law strengthening the conservatorship program might help. (Heather Knight, 10/9)

Los Angeles Times: L.A.'s Jail Reform Activists Are Proposing Maddeningly Modest Demands 
It is exceedingly difficult to qualify an initiative for the Los Angeles County ballot, so the Reform L.A. Jails movement achieved something remarkable earlier this year when it gathered nearly a quarter-million signatures on a petition to require a reexamination of jail funding and to enhance oversight of the Sheriff’s Department. Now the Board of Supervisors must choose whether to allow the measure to proceed to the March 3, 2020, presidential primary ballot or to short-circuit the process and grant the activists instant victory by passing the substance of their measure into law. If only the activists’ demands weren’t so maddeningly modest. (10/9)

Sacramento Bee: Academic Pressure Can Cook Up Dubious Science Research
The public’s waning faith in science is only partly a reflection of our social and political times. Yes, there are the willfully ignorant people who refuse to admit that climate change is real and caused in large part by human activity, because that would mean giving up gas guzzlers and other polluting comforts of life. Others get their woeful information about vaccines from social media instead of finding out the facts about the billions of lives that have been saved by immunization – half a billion from smallpox alone, compared with the last century before its eradication. (Karin Klein, 10/10)

The San Francisco Chronicle: Vote No On Prop. 2. Don’t Divert Mental Health Funds
Family-member advocates for those with a serious mental illness know that Proposition 2, while well-meaning, will not solve the homelessness problem for those who are most ill. Prop. 2 is a misuse of funds, an unnecessary giveaway to investors and bureaucrats, that further reduces access and quality of treatment for people with severe mental illnesses. (Catherine Lauren Rettagliata, 10/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Homeless Outreach Team Helps Nudge SF’s Street Souls Into Better Lives 
Working as a HOT member is draining, physically and emotionally, but it’s also essential to nudging the thousands of people living on San Francisco’s sidewalks into better lives. ... Top pay is $27.78 per hour, or about $57,800. That’s compared with the $71,760 the city is paying new members of the Poop Patrol — meaning city officials place a higher value on getting homeless people’s feces off the sidewalks than getting homeless people themselves off the sidewalks. (Heather Knight, 10/12)

San Jose Mercury News: Why Voters Should Approve Prop. 1 Housing Bond
California can’t hope to solve its housing crisis unless the state makes a serious investment in building more units. Proposition 1 does just that, authorizing a $4 billion bond for housing loans for veterans and affordable housing for low-income households. Voters should support it on Nov. 6. (10/6)

Fresno Bee: Physician Assistants Want To Help Homeless People
Currently, in order for PAs to provide care, California law requires that a physician sign a delegation agreement making the physician legally responsible for the care provided by the PAs. ... Because of this outdated law, two well-qualified providers who want to provide more assistance to an incredibly vulnerable population simply can’t. And that needs to change. (Adam Marks, 10/12)

The Mercury News: Monte Sereno Dad Fighting ALS With Daughter At His Side
A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Monte Sereno resident Doug McNeil. I wrote about him a few years ago when he was honored at the White House for his work on a literacy project for the Los Gatos Morning Rotary Club. This time around, he wanted to get the word out about a fundraiser he and his daughter were working on together for the Silicon Valley Walk to Defeat ALS on Oct. 13. “I’m typing this email with my eyes, as the disease has claimed all my motor functions,” McNeil wrote. (Sal Pizarro, 10/8)