AP: Persistent Heat Wave In US Shatters New Records, Causes Deaths In The West
A long-running heat wave that has already shattered previous records across the U.S. persisted on Sunday, baking parts of the West with dangerous temperatures that caused the death of a motorcyclist in Death Valley and held the East in its hot and humid grip. An excessive heat warning — the National Weather Service’s highest alert — was in effect for about 36 million people, or about 10% of the population, said NWS meteorologist Bryan Jackson. Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest tied or broke previous heat records. (Beck and Weber, 7/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: Dozens Treated For Heat-Related Illnesses At Bay Area Hospitals
Dozens of people were treated for heat-related illnesses this week at Bay Area hospitals, including several who needed hospitalization, as the region endured a record-breaking heat wave. (Ho, 7/5)

Fresno Bee: Homeless Man In Fresno Talks About Surviving Excessive Heat 
On the hottest day in Fresno so far this summer, with temperatures soaring to 110 degrees, an elderly man slouched up against a gas station wall and struggled to breathe. He is homeless. (Anteola, 7/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Motorcyclist In California’s Death Valley Dies From Extreme Heat
A motorcycle rider died of heat exposure at Death Valley National Park on Saturday as the region broke a daily temperature record, officials said. The temperature reached 128 degrees in the park, surpassing the previous daily record of 127 degrees, set in 2007, officials said, citing preliminary data. Death Valley often is considered the hottest place in the country. (Hernandez, 7/7)

Los Angeles Times: California’s New Workplace Violence Prevention Law Is Now In Effect. Here's How It Changes Things 
Beginning this month, California businesses are required to have plans in place to prevent violence in the workplace. (Hussain, 7/7)

Los Angeles Times: 'Bringing A Gun To A Knife Fight': LAPD Continues To Shoot People Holding 'Edged Weapon' During Mental Crisis, Analysis Shows
In the first half of 2024, officers shot six people who were holding a sharp object while experiencing a behavioral or mental health crisis — a designation that includes those believed to be suicidal or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Four were killed. There have been 17 police shootings this year, including cases involving edged weapons. (Jany, 7/8)

Los Angeles Times: Will The Grants Pass Ruling On Homelessness Spur Smaller Cities To Shoo People Into L.A.? 
Political leaders across Southern California have offered an array of reactions to the Supreme Court ruling, with some voicing relief and others sounding anxious. (Zahniser and Smith, 7/7)

Voice Of San Diego: Supreme Court Validates San Diego Camping Ban 
The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled homeless camping bans do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, reversing the decisions of lower courts. The decision, eagerly awaited by politicos throughout California, opens the door to harsher crackdowns on homelessness even if no shelter is available. (McWhinney, 7/5)

VC Star: Costco Has A Plan To Help California's Housing Crisis
If Costco's proposal for a mixed-use retail and housing development in California is successful, you won't have to go far to pick up a rotisserie chicken or a package of 30 rolls of toilet paper. (Ward, 7/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Insurers Pocketed $50 Billion From Medicare For Diseases No Doctor Treated
Private insurers involved in the government’s Medicare Advantage program made hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments from 2018 to 2021, including outright wrong ones, a Wall Street Journal analysis of billions of Medicare records found. The questionable diagnoses included some for potentially deadly illnesses, such as AIDS, for which patients received no subsequent care, and for conditions people couldn’t possibly have, the analysis showed. Often, neither the patients nor their doctors had any idea. (Weaver, McGinty, Mathews and Maremont, 7/8)

Stat: Medicare Advantage Insurers Get Bigger Ratings Bonuses 
More than two dozen Medicare Advantage insurers received higher quality marks for 2024, based on a STAT review of new data released July 2 by the federal government. Ten health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group’s UnitedHealthcare and CVS Health’s Aetna, received critical upgrades in some of their offerings that will allow them to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in extra taxpayer-funded bonuses. (Herman, 7/3)

Modern Healthcare: Gene Therapies Test ACA Risk-Adjustment Program
Health insurance companies are concerned multimillion-dollar new gene therapies could break the $9.2 billion health insurance exchange risk-adjustment program. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tinkered with the risk-adjustment system in an effort to better account for high costs, but insurers view the modifications as inadequate in the face of costly new treatments and caution that companies may respond by downgrading benefits and provider networks. (Tepper, 7/5)

Los Angeles Times: Some Infected By COVID FLiRT Report Most Unpleasant Symptoms Yet 
As the summer travel season picks up, COVID cases and hospitalizations are rising in Los Angeles County — and some of those recently reinfected are finding their latest bout to be the worst yet. (Lin II, 7/8)

The Hill: Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff Tests Positive For COVID-19
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff tested positive for COVD-19, the vice president’s office announced Sunday. His office said Emhoff had experienced mild symptoms before being tested Saturday, and is now asymptomatic. He is fully vaccinated, the office said. Vice President Harris was also tested for COVD-19 and tested negative, her office said. (Robertson, 7/7)

CIDRAP: Study Shows Abnormal Immune-Cell Activity With Long COVID
People who have long COVID symptoms—those that linger well after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection—can display signs of abnormal immune-cell activation in many of their organs and tissues, as well as leftover SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the gut, for more than 2 years after infection, according to a small study this week in Science Translational Medicine. University of California, San Francisco researchers analyzed data on 24 people after their initial COVID-19 illness who underwent whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) imaging at time points ranging from 27 to 910 days (about 2 and a half years) after their acute COVID-19 cases. Eighteen of the patients had long COVID. (Wappes, 7/5)

CIDRAP: Kids Vaccinated Against COVID May Have Lower Rates Of Asthma Symptoms 
COVID-19 vaccination may help protect children aged 5 and older against symptomatic asthma, according to a Nemours Children's Health–led research team. Average state-level rates of parent-reported asthma symptoms decreased from 7.77% in 2018 to 2019 to 6.93% in 2020 to 2021. (Van Beusekom, 7/5)

Los Angeles Times: Live Poultry Markets May Be Source Of Bird Flu Virus In San Francisco Wastewater 
Federal officials suspect that live bird markets in San Francisco may be the source of bird flu virus in area wastewater samples. (Rust, 7/4)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Four Norovirus Outbreaks Detected In Sonoma County In Past Month 
Sonoma County public health officials say high levels of norovirus were detected in wastewater surveillance in the past month, during which four outbreaks were reported. (Espinoza, 7/7)

NBC News: 2 California Sisters In ICU With Botulism Amid Outbreak Traced To Home-Canned Nopales
A family party near Fresno, California, resulted in 10 people being treated for botulism, a rare but serious illness caused by bacteria that affects the nervous system, public officials said Friday. The culprit in the outbreak? Home-canned nopales, or cactus pads. Two sisters are currently recovering in intensive care, a spokesperson for the Fresno County Department of Public Health told NBC News. (Baek, 7/5)

Axios: Health Care Industry Pushes Back Against Cybersecurity Proposal
A proposed rule that would require the nation's most critical industries to more quickly report cyberattacks is raising the ire of the health care industry, which claims the new directives could actually hinder its response in a crisis. Why it matters: Cyberattacks have sent shockwaves across the health care industry, but regulators and providers don't agree on how to get a handle on the problem. (Reed, 7/8)

The Washington Post: Tempers Flare As Trump Team Revises Abortion Plank For Republican Platform
Donald Trump has begun to review draft language for the 2024 Republican platform that antiabortion leaders expect will abandon the party’s decades-long call to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend personhood protections to the unborn, according to multiple people involved with the discussions. The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition. Others have started to discuss an effort to issue a “minority report” to the platform at the convention, according to the people involved, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. (Scherer and Dawsey, 7/5)

Politico: Anti-Abortion Groups Look To The Left For Latest Strategy
The left has spent two years galvanizing voters against state abortion bans by handing a microphone to the women affected by them. Conservatives are now adopting that playbook in an effort to turn public opinion in their favor. Anti-abortion groups’ new campaign features women speaking directly to the camera — sharing stories of eschewing abortion after being raped, receiving a diagnosis of a fetal anomaly or finding out they were too far along to legally terminate their pregnancy. They aim to match the first-person ads that Democrats and abortion-rights groups have used in key races, like the successful abortion-rights ballot measure in Ohio and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky. (Messerly and Ollstein, 7/8)

Bloomberg: Ozempic May Lower Risk Of Obesity-Related Cancers, Study Finds
Blockbuster weight loss and diabetes drugs may lower patients’ risk of developing some common types of cancer that are closely linked to obesity, new evidence suggests. Patients with Type 2 diabetes who were prescribed drugs known as glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, developed fewer obesity-related cancers than patients who were treated with insulin, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open. But the newer drugs didn’t perform better than metformin, an older diabetes drug with known cancer risk reduction properties. (Muller and Kresge, 7/5)

Becker's Hospital Review: Ozempic Linked To Rare Condition That Causes Blindness, Study Suggests
A new study suggests patients taking semaglutide — the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — may be at higher risk of an eye condition that can cause blindness. However, study authors and experts told NBC News the findings only show an association, and that additional research is needed to confirm a causal link. (Carbajal, 7/3)