California Healthline: Track Opioid Settlement Payouts — To The Cent — In Your Community
Want to know how much opioid settlement money your city, county, or state has received so far? Or how much they’re expecting in the future? Use our new searchable database to find out. (Pattani, Zuraw, and Hacker, 4/2)

Bay Area News Group: California Could Be First State To Give Workers Right To Ignore Boss's After-Hours Calls, Texts, Emails
The smartphone, Silicon Valley’s signature gift to modernity, has made it easier than ever for work to intrude into personal and family time, tilting work-life balance further toward the job. Now a California lawmaker says there must be guardrails to keep that in check. (Woolfolk and Sulek, 4/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Stanford Study Finds Keto Diet Can Help Manage Serious Mental Illness
Eating a ketogenic diet appears to help people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers — underscoring the importance of diet in the management of serious mental illness. The study, published in Psychiatry Research on March 27, found that trial participants who were instructed to follow a ketogenic diet — high in protein and fat, and low in carbohydrates — for four months showed improvements in both psychiatric outcomes and metabolic syndromes like obesity and insulin resistance. (Ho, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Snapchat’s Friend-Ranking Feature Adds To Teen Anxiety 
A Snapchat feature lets paying users see their position in their friends’ digital orbits. For some teens, whose friends are everything, it’s adding to their anxiety. Snapchat+ is the app’s $4-a-month subscription service. Subscribers can check where they rank with a particular friend based on how often that friend communicates with them. The result is automatically rendered in a solar-system metaphor: Are you Mercury, the planet closest to your friend? Great! Uranus? Bad sign. (Jargon, 3/30)

Bay Area News Group: Santa Clara County Nurses Prepare For Three-Day Strike Over Wages, Working Conditions
In what’s expected to be a three-day strike impacting three South Bay hospitals and possibly patient care, thousands of Santa Clara County nurses plan to walk off the job early Tuesday in protest over workplace conditions, wages and staffing ratios. (Hase, 4/1)

Healthcare Finance News: Tenet Healthcare Completes Sale Of Six California Hospitals
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corporation has completed the sale of six hospitals in California, the organization said this week. Four of Tenet's Orange County and Los Angeles County hospitals, and their related operations, have been sold to UCI Health for about $975 million, consistent with the approval of the University of California Board of Regents. The completed transaction includes Fountain Valley Regional Hospital, Lakewood Regional Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center and Placentia-Linda Hospital. (Lagasse, 4/1)

Axios: HHS Orders Hospitals To Get Patient Consent For Invasive Exams
Federal health officials on Monday ordered hospitals to get patients' consent before they undergo breast, pelvic and other sensitive examinations, citing "increasing concerns" about the absence of such permissions in educational settings. Media reports and medical literature have documented instances where medical students subjected anesthetized patients to invasive exams without proper consent, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and other officials wrote to teaching hospitals and medical schools. (Bettelheim, 4/1)

NBC News: Senate Investigating Whether ER Care Has Been Harmed By Growing Role Of Private-Equity Firms
A Senate committee has asked three major private-equity firms for information on how they run or staff hospital emergency departments to see if private equity’s management of a large share of the nation’s ERs has harmed patients. Led by its chairman, Sen. Gary Peters’ ... staff conducted interviews with over 40 emergency department physicians who expressed “significant concerns” about patient safety and care resulting from the aggressive practices of private-equity firms in the arena. (Morgenson, 4/1)

Axios: ACA Enrollment Surge Brings Tradeoffs For Kids
More kids than ever are covered through the Affordable Care Act as the law's insurance markets help catch those affected by the nationwide Medicaid enrollment purge that began a year ago this week. Why it matters: The transition to the ACA marketplaces from Medicaid or a sister program just for kids comes with tradeoffs that hundreds of thousands of families may be discovering about their child's new coverage. (Goldman, 4/2)

Stat: Medicare Advantage 2025 Payments Will Dip, Biden Administration Says
Over the past few weeks, Medicare Advantage insurers demanded that the Biden administration give them higher payment rates for next year. The government’s data on how much people were using health care didn’t match their own data, insurers and lobbyists griped — and therefore they wouldn’t be paid enough to cover those costs. But the federal government was not persuaded by the industry’s data or lobbying push. The Biden administration and its Medicare agency decided to stick with their proposals from January on Monday, dealing a blow to an insurance industry that has come to rely on Medicare Advantage for a steady stream of profits. (Herman, 4/1)

NBC News: Medicare's Weight-Loss Drug Wegovy Coverage Poses Potential Premium Hike For Millions Of Enrollees
Medicare’s recent move to cover the weight-loss drug Wegovy for some recipients with heart disease risk could drive up the cost of monthly premiums for many of the 65 million adults enrolled in the federal health insurance program, experts warn. How much of a price jump isn’t yet known. The premium increase would depend on how many millions qualify for the popular medication, which is priced at around $1,300 a month. (Lovelace Jr., 4/2)

Newsweek: Medicare Recipients Lose Thousands To 'Phantom Billing'
Seniors relying on Medicare to pay for their health care are being targeted by a widespread "phantom billing" scam that has the potential to rob them of thousands of dollars. Phantom billing occurs when fraudulent charges are filed to Medicare by health care providers/doctors and medical equipment companies without the recipient's knowledge. Some seniors targeted reported being billed for urinary catheters they never asked for. (Blake, 4/1)

Stat: Medical Bills So High, Medicare Adding Extra Digits To Claim Forms
Health care costs are getting so high that prices are literally running off of the page. Medicare on a couple of occasions recently has had to deal with billing forms that don’t provide adequate space for prices. (Wilkerson, 4/2)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Flood Victims Could Lose Hotel Vouchers As Soon As Next Week 
Displaced flood victims who have been staying in hotels under a county program will find out this week whether the help they’ve been getting will run out on or before May 11, the official end of the program. (Alvarenga, 4/2)

Los Angeles Times: Doctors Warn Of A 'Wild West' In California Cosmetic Surgery 
Inside a clinic wedged next to a smoke shop in a South Los Angeles strip mall, Dr. Mohamad Yaghi operated on a 28-year-old woman who had traveled from Las Vegas to have fat trimmed from her arms and stomach. Yaghi had been offering liposuction for roughly seven years when he started making incisions that day in October 2020, but he was trained as a pediatrician, according to a formal accusation later filed by state regulators. (Reyes, 3/31)

California Healthline: More Patients Are Losing Their Doctors — And Trust In The Primary Care System
A shortage of primary care providers is driving more people to seek routine care in emergency settings. (Arditi, 4/2)

USA Today: Costco To New Offer Weight-Loss Program Possibly Including Ozempic
Costco and its low-cost healthcare partner are expanding into weight-loss management.Costco will begin offering its members in the U.S. access to a weight-loss program through Sesame, a healthcare marketplace, Sesame exclusively told USA TODAY. The service, which will cost $179 every three months, is scheduled to become available April 2. (Lin-Fisher, 4/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Why Ozempic Doesn’t Help Some People Lose Weight 
Behind the blockbuster success of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy is a less-noticed phenomenon: Some people don’t lose much weight on them. There is wide variation in weight loss on these types of drugs, called GLP-1s. Doctors say roughly 10% to 15% of people who try them are “non-responders,” typically defined as those who lose less than 5% of their body weight. These patients, doctors say, don’t experience enough appetite reduction to result in significant weight loss. (Reddy, 4/1)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Government Extends TRICARE Prescriptions Through April 4 In 19 Counties, Including San Diego
A temporary waiver in effect through April 4 allows active-duty and retired military personnel on TRICARE health plans to refill prescriptions without additional approval from prescribing doctors. The federal Defense Health Agency granted the waiver in 19 California counties, including San Diego, to assist those who live in areas affected by severe winter storms. (Sisson, 4/1)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Measles Cases On The Rise, Prompting Warning From Sonoma County, Other Bay Area Health Officials
North Bay and Bay Area health officials are urging residents to be on the lookout for symptoms of measles after recent local cases and a rise in incidences across the state and country. As of March 28, there have been 97 confirmed cases across 18 states this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to 58 for all of 2023. (Endicott, 3/31)

CIDRAP: Studies Highlight Waning Antibodies After Mpox Vaccination 
Findings from two new studies that will be presented later this month at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Barcelona, Spain, show that antibody levels produced by the Jynneos mpox vaccine fall to very low levels within 1 month to a year, but they remain high among adults who had previously received a smallpox vaccine. (Wappes, 4/1)

Politico: For Terminal Patients, Dying In California May Get Easier 
California could become home to the nation’s most sweeping assisted dying policies with a new bill that would allow dementia patients and out-of-state residents to end their lives here. (Bluth, 4/1)

The Washington Post: Men Outpace Women In Exercise-Related Head And Face Injuries 
Exercise-related injuries to the head and face have increased in recent years, rising almost 33 percent overall from 2013 to 2022, according to a study in the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery. Men accounted for nearly 56 percent of those injured, but the increase in incidence in the 10-year span was nearly twice as high in women as in men (44.5 vs. 24.2 percent). By age, those 15 to 19 had the highest rate of head and face injuries at about 10 percent. (Searing, 4/1)

NPR: Safer Table Saws May Get Mandated, Possibly Preventing Severed Fingers
Table saws are widely considered the most dangerous power tool, and approximately 30,000 blade-contact injuries require medical treatment each year in the United States. About 4,000 result in amputations that can be career-ending for some professional carpenters and contractors. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that when a person is hospitalized, the societal cost per table saw injury exceeds $500,000 when you also factor in loss of income and pain and suffering. (Neuman and Arnold, 4/2)

Vox: Human Bird Flu Case: How Contagious Is It? The Avian Influenza, Explained.
These developments are concerning. But how worried should we be? Here’s what to know about the risk to humans and to the millions of farmed and wild animals. (Jones and Torrella, 4/1)

Los Angeles Times: Exhausted, Hungry And Sleep-Deprived: UCLA Student Super-Commuters Search For Relief 
Sofia Gevorgian’s life as a college student revolves around her nearly one-hour commute to and from UCLA’s campus in Westwood and her family home in the San Fernando Valley. (Ahn, 4/1)