San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego County First Class Of Physician Assistants Graduates In Bid To Ease Staffing Shortages 
They came to the stage one at a time, trailing parents, siblings, spouses and significant others who took white coats from a rack, holding them up as the graduates shrugged into them, getting a feel for a new level of responsibility in the medical world. (Sisson, 12/18)

CalMatters: Tired Of The Waiting Lists For CA Public Universities, Nursing Students Increasingly Turn To Expensive Private Programs
For Julio Rivera, transferring from a local community college to a bachelor’s program in nursing was always a top priority. As someone who enjoyed helping others, nursing seemed like a natural career. While caring for an aunt with renal failure and Type 2 diabetes, a conversation with her solidified the belief that nursing was his calling. (Buchanan and Munis, 12/18)

Times Of San Diego: Jury Sides With County In Lawsuit From Former SD County Chief Medical Officer 
A federal jury has ruled in San Diego County’s favor in the lawsuit filed by former San Diego County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nicholas Yphantides, who alleged he was discriminated against and wrongfully fired due to a mental disability that surfaced due to the strain and stress of his duties handling the county’s COVID-19 response. Yphantides, a public presence during the early months of the pandemic known by many as “Dr. Nick,” alleged he suffered from a long dormant bipolar disorder that resurfaced in late 2020 and early 2021, which caused him to experience and exhibit manic behavior. (Ireland, 12/18)

The Bakersfield Californian: Houchin Community Blood Bank To Change Hours Of Operation 
Houchin Community Blood Bank announced it will revise some of its hours of operation effective Dec. 23. Houchin's Oswell Street location will be closed Dec. 23 and Dec. 30. The location will also change its operating hours from 8 a.m. through 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. (12/18)

Stat: FTC, DOJ, HHS's New Health Counsels To Take On Price-Gouging
Three major government agencies are adding new officials to investigate price-gouging in health care — positions experts say will help the three agencies better coordinate across the government. The new jobs are part of the Biden White House’s new efforts to scrutinize what it calls “corporate greed” in health care. (Trang, 12/19)

Axios: Americans Less Satisfied With Almost Every Part Of The Health System
Americans' satisfaction with almost every major part of the health care system has dropped since 2010, according to a new Gallup analysis. Drugmakers took the biggest reputational hit, and ratings for physicians fell sharply, too. (Goldman, 12/19)

California Healthline: Patients Facing Death Are Opting For A Lifesaving Heart Device — But At What Risk? 
The HeartMate 3 is considered the safest mechanical heart pump of its kind, but a federal database contains more than 4,500 reports in which the medical device may have caused or contributed to a patient’s death. (Chang and Hacker, 12/19)

CalMatters: Californians Surprised By Loss Of Medi-Cal Health Insurance
Florinda Miguel took her 6-year-old daughter for a routine dentist appointment in early December only to find out that her Medi-Cal coverage had lapsed. It took her by surprise. She hadn’t had to renew her kids’ Medi-Cal coverage in almost four years. The Los Angeles resident said she doesn’t recall getting any notices or renewal paperwork in the mail this year. “I don’t know if they sent it, if it was lost, I don’t know but I didn’t get it” she said. (Ibarra, 12/18)

Los Angeles Times: Apple Watch Sales Halted Due To Import Ban 
Apple is pulling two of its most popular watch models from shelves this week. By Christmas Day, if a trade ruling stands, those watches will be illegal to import into the U.S. Online orders for the Series 9 and Ultra 2 models will end Thursday, and the watches will be cleared out of the retail stores by Sunday, which is Christmas Eve. The pause in Apple Watch sales comes as the tech giant prepares to comply with an International Trade Court ruling that places an import ban on the products. In late October, the International Trade Court ruled that Apple’s watches contain technology that violates patents held by the Orange County-based medical tech company Masimo. (Merchant, 12/18)

Bloomberg: Apple Watch Ban Prompts High-Stakes Engineering Changes
Engineers at the company are racing to make changes to algorithms on the device that measure a user’s blood oxygen level — a feature that Masimo Corp. has argued infringes its patents. They’re adjusting how the technology determines oxygen saturation and presents the data to customers, according to people familiar with the work. (Gurman, 12/18)

Los Angeles Times: $750 A Month, No Questions Asked, Improved The Lives Of Homeless People 
If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on? That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized. (Smith, 12/19)

Los Angeles Times: The Reason Removing Homeless Camps Is Harder In California 
In cities such as Washington and much of the rest of the nation, officials are relatively free to enforce local laws to remove homeless encampments. But thanks to a series of rulings by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, public officials in California and eight other Western states face greater scrutiny and legal challenges when they move to clear encampments or relocate homeless people — even when the local laws are virtually the same as those used by cities outside the 9th Circuit. (Savage and Bierman, 12/18)

Voice of OC: Stanton Issues Moratorium On New Motels Over Prostitution, Drugs And Crime
Stanton motels have become a magnet for criminal activity, city officials say, draining resources and costing hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars. Now city leaders are calling for a moratorium on allowing new motels to be built in Stanton and a temporary ban on expanding current motels in effort to protect public safety and to conduct a study on the issue. (elattar, 12/18)

Bay Area News Group: Rent Control: Bay Area Advocates Seek Tenant Protections In These Cities
Tenant advocates are pushing to put rent control measures on the ballot in at least four Bay Area cities this November, the latest effort to expand such protections across the region as tens of thousands continue struggling with sky-high housing costs. (Varian, 12/17)

Voice of OC: Tustin Water Rates To Spike After City Shuts Down Contaminated Wells
Tustin is the latest city to hike water rates for residents this year, but they have a different reason than many of their surrounding cities – some of the drinking water might not be safe. Due to concerns about chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl substances in the city’s groundwater, also known as “forever chemicals,” city leaders shut off five of the city’s wells, forcing them to import nearly half the city’s water from out of town.  (Biesiada, 12/18)

Voice Of San Diego: San Diego's Most Polluted Beaches In Three Charts 
Last May, the San Diego County Public Health Department started using more sensitive technology to detect how much and how often sewage is spilling from Tijuana onto southern San Diego’s beaches.  The answer: It’s spilling most of the time, making the water way more polluted than we knew it to be. (Elmer and Pourfard, 12/18)

San Diego Union-Tribune: For Military Families, Diverse Caregiving Resources Prove To Be Lifeline 
When Mary Tallouzi received the call that her younger son, Daniel Tallouzi, had suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq, she dropped everything to become his full-time caregiver. (Mapp, 12/19)

Military Times: More Postpartum Recovery Time Yields Better PT Scores, Study Says
Good news for new moms: A recent study found that airmen who wait 12 months to take their first physical fitness test after giving birth score higher than those who test at six months postpartum. Women who took longer to recover from childbirth were 6.4% less likely to fail fitness tests than those who tested at the six-month mark, according to the study’s findings, published Dec. 11 in the journal Military Medicine. (Sicard, 12/18)

Military.com: VA Makes Pitch For More Money To Counter 7.4% Rise In Homeless Veterans Living On The Streets Or In Shelters 
The Department of Veterans Affairs has plans for major funding increases to counter a sharp and unexpected 7.4% rise in veteran homelessness, plans that are dependent on how much money a divided Congress will approve for next year's VA budget. In a release last Friday, the VA announced its intention to devote "hundreds of millions" to assist veterans sleeping in shelters or living on the streets and other places "not fit for human habitation." (Sisk, 12/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: Season Of Sharing Helps Former Execs Stunned To Find Themselves In A Food Line
Friends Debra and Teresa never expected they’d be in line at a food bank. But on a recent Friday morning in Petaluma, that’s exactly where they were. “Both of us used to be executives, and now we’re standing in a food line,” Debra said. “I was always a volunteer when I lived in San Francisco,” Teresa said. “It’s very unusual being on the other side.” (Echeverria, 12/17)

The Mercury News: Records Raise New Questions About Alameda County’s Response To Toddler Fentanyl Death
Just two days after 23-month-old Kristofer Ferreyra died of a suspected fentanyl overdose, an Alameda County social worker recommended keeping his three young siblings in the care of his mother, despite police having just found tin foil, baggies and other drug paraphernalia in their house. In fact, for reasons that remain unclear, Kristofer’s death wasn’t even noted in a social worker’s initial assessment of the home, according to new records obtained by this news organization. (Rodgers, 12/18)

CNN: Coronavirus Subvariant JN.1 Growing Fast In US, Already Dominant In The Northeast 
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the coronavirus subvariant JN.1 is now causing about 20% of new Covid-19 infections in this country, and it’s the fastest-growing strain of the virus. It’s already dominant in the Northeast, where it is estimated to cause about a third of new infections. JN.1 is descended from BA.2.86, or Pirola, a subvariant that came to the world’s attention over the summer because of the large number of changes to its spike proteins: more than 30. (Goodman, 12/19)

Axios: COVID Levels Reach Highs Ahead Of Holiday Travel Season
Wastewater analysis sites nationwide are showing high levels of COVID-19 as we head into the holiday travel season, per the latest CDC data. Almost every state reporting such data is showing at least "high" levels compared to baseline trends, with many reporting "very high" levels, as defined by the CDC. (Fitzpatrick and Feng, 12/19)

California Healthline: Social Security Chief Apologizes To Congress For Misleading Testimony On Overpayments
Acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi sent the letter days after KFF Health News and Cox Media Group reported that the agency has been demanding money back from more than twice as many people as she’d disclosed in October testimony. (Hilzenrath and Fleischer, 12/18)