CalMatters: Medi-Cal Providers May Get A Pay Increase
One of the joys of Dr. Sumana Reddy’s job as a family medicine doctor is seeing patients of all ages and walks of life. Reddy runs a private practice with a couple of locations in Monterey County, and her patients include Salinas’ farmworkers, newborns, government workers, school teachers, and even some patients she delivered many years ago. (Ibarra, 5/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Woman, 82, Files Suit Against Ambulance Firm, Alleging Sexual Assault
An 82-year-old woman was sexually assaulted just before Christmas last year by a paramedic as she lay tightly strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance, unable to even move her head, according to a lawsuit. ... The attack occurred when 35-year-old Miguel Ontiveros was part of a two-person team taking the victim to San Mateo Medical Center on Dec. 23 after she’d fallen in the Colma nursing home where she lived. She was strapped down by her arms, legs and chest, as well as a brace immobilizing her head. (Fagan, 5/22)

Sacramento Business Journal: Selling The Mission: Elica Health's David Hughes, CFO And COO, Brings Health Care To Underserved Communities
In a race against other local health care providers to hire enough staff to support his company’s broadening work with traditionally underserved communities, Elica Health Centers Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer David Hughes is convinced he’s doing what he’s meant to do. (King, 5/22)

Bloomberg: New Weight-Loss Drug Found To Be Effective In Pill Form, Wegovy Maker Says
Novo Nordisk A/S’s weight-loss drug semaglutide, sold as the once-weekly Wegovy shot, was effective as a daily pill in a study. People with obesity or who were overweight and had another health problem lost an average of 15.1% of their body weight when assigned to take the pill, compared with a 2.4% loss in a group given a placebo, the Danish drugmaker said. Both groups also made lifestyle changes. (Kresge, 5/22)

California Healthline: Bill Of The Month: He Returned To The US For His Daughter’s Wedding. He Left With A $42,000 Hospital Bill.
After emergency surgery, an American expatriate with Swiss insurance now carries the baggage of a five-figure bill. Costs for medical care in the U.S. can be two to three times the rates in other developed countries, so foreigners and expats with good insurance in their home countries need travel insurance to protect themselves from “crazy prices.” (Tribble, 5/23)

Bloomberg: Walgreens Settles Consumer Claims It Knew Elizabeth Holmes Company Theranos Was A Fraud
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. reached a tentative settlement with consumers who received Theranos Inc. blood tests in Arizona and California and claimed that the drugstore giant was “willfully blind” to fraud at the blood-testing startup. (Blumberg, 5/23)

Los Angeles Daily News: LAUSD Recognizes Graduating Seniors Who Have Faced Homelessness
One student speaker, Kevin Sedano, will be graduating on June 9 from James Monroe High School in North Hills with a 4.0 grade average. For years, his family bounced from one home to another, and he would attend a new school each year. That instability took a toll, he said, but he refused to let homelessness define him. (Tat, 5/22)

Los Angeles Times: A Public-Private Model Would End The Foster Care-To-Homelessness Pipeline, Study Suggests.
A mix of philanthropic capital and government rental subsidies could close the housing gap that leads hundreds of emancipated foster care youth into homelessness each year, according to a study commissioned by seven California charitable foundations. A financial model depending partly on grants and partly on moderate-return investments from the more than $100 billion in endowments held by the major foundations could produce enough dedicated housing to provide stability for the 1,140 youths leaving foster care each year, the study found. (Smith, 5/23)

The Washington Post: Seniors Are Flooding Homeless Shelters That Can’t Care For Them
Nearly a quarter of a million people 55 or older are estimated by the government to have been homeless in the United States during at least part of 2019, the most recent reliable federal count available. They represent a particularly vulnerable segment of the 70 million Americans born after World War II known as the baby boom generation, the youngest of whom turn 59 this year. (Rowland, 5/22)

The Desert Sun: No Mpox Virus Detected In Most Recent Palm Springs Wastewater Tests
Days after the presence of the mpox virus was found in Palm Springs wastewater for the first time in months, public health officials say more recent tests have not detected the virus. (Albani-Burgio, 5/22)

Berkeleyside: Live Rabid Bat Found By Berkeley Dad Wows 4-Year-Old Daughter
A bat infected with rabies was found near a home in central Berkeley earlier this month. On May 5, Berkeley resident Reza Sirafinejad spotted the “very lethargic” winged mammal on the back stairs of his home on Roosevelt Avenue near Allston Way. Sirafinejad, who had never seen a bat in Berkeley, ran to tell his wife and 4-year-old daughter Eliana, who insisted he stand far away from it as “its ears were huge” and would be easily disturbed by noise. (Kwok, 5/22)  

Los Angeles Times: Free Money Still Available For Small L.A. Businesses Hit By COVID 
With pandemic state of emergency over, the government programs tied to COVID-19 have either ended or are winding down. But if you have a small business in Los Angeles that was affected by the pandemic — and which ones weren’t? — you still have time to apply for a shot of free money. (Healey, 5/22)

The Washington Post: An Exercise Trial For Long Covid Is Being Criticized By Some Patients
The exercise study protocol has not been finalized, but it will test physical therapy at different intensity levels, tailored to the patient’s capabilities, and aim to improve endurance, said Adrian Hernandez, executive director of Duke Clinical Research Institute. ... Some long-covid advocates, however, say that any exercise trial could be potentially dangerous for long-covid patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. (Morris, 5/22)

Stat: New Data Reveals Deeper Problems With Prisons’ Covid Response
The incarcerated people at Federal Medical Center Devens should have been some of the first to receive the Covid vaccines, back when they first came out in December 2020. At the time, the country was prioritizing high-risk people in high-risk settings, like older Americans in nursing homes. So Devens seemed a better candidate than most prisons for an early vaccine rollout: It’s one of just seven facilities in the country equipped to handle federal prisoners with complex medical conditions like end-stage renal disease — people who were also especially vulnerable to dying from the coronavirus. (Florko, Parker and Sheridan, 5/23)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Boosters Not Linked To Miscarriages
In JAMA Network Open, HealthPartners Institute researchers looking at a database of more than 100,000 US pregnancies found no link between administration of monovalent COVID-19 booster vaccine shots and miscarriage before 20 weeks of pregnancy. The study predates the availability of bivalent boosters. (Soucheray, 5/22)

AP: New Nasal Spray To Reverse Fentanyl And Other Opioid Overdoses Gets FDA Approval
The Food and Drug Administration endorsed Opvee, a nasal spray update of the drug nalmefene, which was first approved as an injection in the mid-1990s but later removed from the market due to low sales. Naloxone comes as both a nasal spray and injection. It’s not immediately clear how the new drug will be used differently compared to naloxone, and some experts see potential downsides to its longer-acting effect. (Perrone, 5/22)

Axios: Biden: Congress Must Pass GOP-Led Fentanyl Bill
The Biden administration called on Congress Monday to pass a bill aimed at tackling fentanyl trafficking in the U.S., which would see the synthetic opioid raised to the highest classification of illegal drugs. The administration's public support for the Republican-led Halt All Lethal Trafficking of (HALT) Fentanyl Act comes amid a growing synthetic opioid crisis in the U.S. (Habeshian, 5/23)

KQED: As Wildfire Smoke Worsens Public Health, Government Watchdog Calls EPA Response ‘Ad Hoc’
A new father drove home from the hospital in downtown Modesto, scared — not by having a newborn baby, but by smoke-filled, “apocalyptic-looking skies.” Tom Helme couldn’t see past the next stoplight on the flat, straight road ahead. On that fall day in 2017, it was dark, he said, “like if a nuclear bomb went off, or something blocked the sun.” The San Joaquin Valley was already years into what regulators now say is a downward slide in air quality, choked by smoke from frequent wildfires. (Peterson and Bergin, 5/23)

The Bakersfield Californian: Preventing Child Drownings The Focus Of County Health Department News Conference 
"Tragically, over the last five years, from 2017 to 2021, we've had 28 children who have died from drowning in Kern County," said Chad Casto, chairman of the county's Child Death Review Team, a multi-agency group that keeps track of child deaths and develops strategies to prevent such tragedies in the future. (Mayer, 5/22)

Los Angeles Times: Multibillion-Dollar Santa Monica Fitness Company Faces Allegations Of Exploiting Exercise Coaches
Join Beachbody to shed those pounds, help others lose weight and get rich in the process. That was the Santa Monica fitness company’s pitch to attract its fitness coaches, but plaintiffs allege in a class-action lawsuit Monday that they were used as low-cost labor to help Beachbody get rich instead. (Ding, 5/22)

Orange County Register: Orange County’s Older Population Growing Faster Than Data About Their Needs 
A new report on the status of older people in Orange County reaches sweeping findings about problems such as hunger (tens of thousands of local seniors need food assistance), dementia (its prevalence is growing) and even loneliness (a hidden but important problem), but it offers just two specific conclusions. First, the county’s older population is growing quickly. The county currently has about  495,000 residents age 65 or older, roughly 15.7% of the total population. By 2050, the county’s 65-and-up crowd is expected to nearly double, to 926,000, or 28% of the total. (Mouchard, 5/22)

Napa Valley Register: Jennifer Garner Hosts St. Helena Event Raising $1 Million For Local Cancer Screening
Actress Jennifer Garner and other high-powered donors lent Hollywood panache to a fundraiser that raised over $1 million to expand cancer screenings for Napa Valley's farmworkers and firefighters. (Duarte, 5/22)

Axios: Dems Think Twice About Clawing Back COVID-19 Funds For Debt Limit
Congressional Democrats are having second thoughts about taking back unspent coronavirus funds as part of a debt limit deal, concerned that doing so could have serious consequences for myriad public health initiatives. The COVID-19 relief funds were supposed to be the low-hanging fruit in any debt ceiling compromise and have been overshadowed by more contentious issues like spending caps and Medicaid work requirements. (Knight and Goldman, 5/23)

The New York Times: Biden And McCarthy Describe ‘Productive’ Debt Limit Talks, But No Deal Is Reached
President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed optimism on Monday that they could break the partisan stalemate that has prevented action to avert a default on the nation’s debt, but remained far apart on a deal to raise the debt limit as Democrats resisted Republicans’ demands for spending cuts in exchange. The two met face to face at the White House for the second time in two weeks in a show of good will after a weekend of behind-the-scenes clashes among negotiators, punctuated by a move by Republicans on Friday to halt the talks and accusations by both sides that the other was being unreasonable. (Edmondson and Rogers, 5/22)

The Hill: These Are The Biggest Sticking Points In The Debt Ceiling Fight
Congress and the White House have just 10 days to reach a deal to raise the debt ceiling before the Treasury Department estimates the nation risks default. But major sticking points have emerged in the past week. (Folley, 5/22)