KQED: California Open To Resolving Suit Against Catholic Hospital Over Emergency Abortion Care
The state’s Department of Justice on Wednesday appeared to suggest it was open to settling its lawsuit against a Catholic hospital in Northern California accused of denying a pregnant woman emergency abortion care. Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit on Monday, alleging that policy at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka prevented doctors from performing a potentially life-saving emergency abortion on Dr. Anna Nusslock, who was 15 weeks pregnant with twins when her water broke, so long as “fetal heart tones” were present. (DeBenedetti, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Surgeon Nicknamed 'Dr. Laguna' Faces Criminal Charges
Dr. Arian Mowlavi, a plastic surgeon who branded himself “Dr. Laguna” on social media, is facing two felony counts of battery with serious bodily injury months after he reached a $6-million settlement with three dozen former patients. On social media accounts and his websites, Mowlavi touted himself as a “renowned body sculptor” and charged tens of thousands of dollars for some procedures. But in recent years, Mowlavi has come under scrutiny from the state medical board and former patients, who allege the doctor pressured them into additional procedures, made lewd comments when examining them and in some cases botched their surgeries. (Fry, 10/2)

Times of San Diego: La Jolla Researcher To Receive $2.4 Million In Funding To Develop Vaccines
An immunology researcher and professor has received a federal grant to help develop vaccines against viruses with potential to develop into pandemics. La Jolla Institute for Immunology professor Sujan Shresta, Ph.D. will receive more than $2.4 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to help test experimental vaccine strategies against deadly viruses from the flavivirus and alphavirus families. (Binkowski, 10/2)

AP: US School-Entry Vaccination Rates Fall As Exemptions Keep Rising 
U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Wednesday. The share of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 3.3%, up from 3% the year before. Meanwhile, 92.7% of kindergartners got their required shots, which is a little lower than the previous two years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic the vaccination rate was 95%, the coverage level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak. The changes may seem slight but are significant, translating to about 80,000 kids not getting vaccinated, health officials say. (Stobbe, 10/2)

The Washington Post: Eli Lilly’s Weight-Loss Drug No Longer In Shortage, FDA Says 
The two-year shortage of Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs is over, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. Eli Lilly’s supply of Mounjaro, which is used to treat Type 2 diabetes, and popular weight-loss drug Zepbound, can now meet present and projected national demand, the FDA said in a statement. Both medications, which trigger the hormone GLP-1 and curb hunger, have been in shortage since 2022 as demand for weight-loss drugs has skyrocketed. (Ziegler and Gilbert, 10/2)

The New York Times: Officials Cast Doubt On A Dementia Drug, But Human Trials Continue 
The S.E.C. alleged shortcomings in research said to support the drug, and its developer agreed to a $40 million settlement. Some experts wonder why clinical trials have not been stopped. (Rosenbluth, 10/2)

MSN: U.S. Government Extends Negotiation Timeline For Medicare Drug Price Cuts
The U.S. government has taken a step in its ongoing efforts to manage healthcare costs by extending the negotiation timeline for Medicare drug price cuts. This decision, announced on Wednesday, is part of a broader strategy to ensure that the process is both fair and effective. ... In response to feedback from both patients and drugmakers, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has introduced changes to the negotiation process. These changes include meeting with companies earlier and providing more opportunities for counter offers. The agency will now engage with drugmakers before making its initial offer, and one of the three allotted negotiation meetings will occur before the deadline for the first counter offer. (Morales, 10/2)

Bay Area News Group: Mackenzie Scott Donates $30 Million To Bay Area Affordable Housing Fund
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated $30 million to Housing Trust Silicon Valley, a nonprofit working to address the Bay Area’s growing affordable housing crisis. The funds will support the construction of affordable housing across the region, the San Jose-based organization announced Wednesday. (Mascasero, 10/2)

LAist: Auditors Probing LA’s Homelessness Spending Describe Poor Accounting And Inconsistent Care
Los Angeles is directing millions to tackle homelessness but not all of it appears to be well-spent or properly accounted for, according to auditors charged with looking at how the city is putting those public funds to use. Auditors with the firm Alvarez & Marsal said during a court hearing Wednesday that contracts with service providers were not written in a way by the joint city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to measure outcomes or to set standards for what counts as a hot meal or storage, for example. (Huang, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: As RV Camps Grow, New Bill Seeks To Reduce Them In L.A.
Mayor Karen Bass promises Angelenos will see more RV encampments cleared and people housed after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that opens up more than two dozen properties near L.A. freeways to store towed RVs, feed homeless individuals and provide emergency shelter. The legislation carried by Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur, who represents Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills and other Westside communities, gives Los Angeles access to 25 Caltrans parcels under or near freeways for $1 a month. The bill sponsored by Bass aims to solve the logistical problem that has vexed city officials for years — where to store towed RVs. (Uranga, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Doctor Who Helped Supply Matthew Perry With Ketamine Pleads Guilty
One of two doctors charged with supplying ketamine to Matthew Perry pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally distributing the surgical anesthetic. Dr. Mark Chavez is among three defendants who signed a plea deal and are facing lesser charges in Perry’s death, which federal prosecutors chalked up to a conspiracy by multiple individuals to provide the actor with the drug. (Winton, 10/2)

Reuters: US CDC Warns Of Overdose Risk From Fake Prescription Medicines Online 
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday alerted public health officials and clinicians about the potential risk for drug overdose among individuals ordering counterfeit prescription medicines from online pharmacies. The counterfeit pills sold through illegal internet-based pharmacies frequently contain fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is the leading cause of drug overdoses in the United States, the health agency said. (10/2)

Stat: To Aid Addiction Treatment, Lawmakers Tell DEA To Back Off Buprenorphine Enforcement
Two Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Drug Enforcement Administration to take a more lax approach to regulating buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid addiction. “Bupe,” also known by the brand name Suboxone, is one of just two medications currently approved to treat opioid cravings and withdrawal. And though it is associated with a 38% reduction in risk of opioid death, it remains stigmatized because it is chemically an opioid — and, accordingly, highly scrutinized by the DEA. (Facher, 10/3)

USA Today: What Is Gabapentin? Here's Why It's So Controversial.
Many of the prescription drugs that are commonly abused or misused are brands most people have heard of. Painkillers, also known as opioids, are the most frequently abused ones, per data from the New York State Department of Health. These include morphine, codeine, oxycodone and hydrocodone, with brand names OxyContin, Vicodin and Lortab. Depressants that are used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders include brands like Valium and Xanax and are also commonly abused. Ditto for stimulants that treat ADHD such as Ritalin, Dexedrine and Adderall. Dr. Holly Geyer, an addiction medicine specialist and the lead physician of the Mayo Clinic opioid stewardship program in Arizona, explains that in an effort to help combat opioid-related drug abuse, many doctors have been turning to a class of drugs that isn't classified as a controlled substance: gabapentinoids. This has contributed to a drug called gabapentin becoming the sixth-most prescribed medication in the United States. (Austin, 10/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why J.D. Vance’s Claims That Trump ‘Saved’ Obamacare Are False
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) on Tuesday falsely claimed that President Donald Trump “saved” Obamacare, the 2010 federal law that created state insurance exchanges to sell health plans to those who don’t get coverage through work or the government. In the televised Oct. 1 debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vance said Trump “saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership.” (Ho, 10/2)

Forbes: Vance Suggests Health Insurance Changes Could Raise Premiums For Those With Pre-Existing Conditions
J.D. Vance is proposing substantial changes to ACA health insurance coverage that could lead to the elimination of the ACA’s protection against insurers levying higher premiums on individuals in poor health. Vance has spoken of deregulating the insurance market so that “people can choose a plan that actually makes sense for them,” as reported in The Hill. On the campaign trail in North Carolina last month, for instance, Vance suggested getting rid of the ACA’s single-risk pool which enables community rating and introducing separate risk pools for people with chronic health conditions. This would disrupt one of the ACA’s guiding principles which states that health insurers may not charge people higher premiums based on their health status. (Cohen, 10/2)

Politico: Dems Dismiss Trump-Vance Abortion Messaging As ‘Lip Service,’ But It Might Be Working 
Trump and Vance’s efforts on the debate stage and on social media Tuesday night were the latest examples of the GOP ticket’s months-long effort to neutralize one of Democrats’ most effective lines of attack and rebrand as moderate on abortion, and there are signs it might be working. Recent polling in several battleground states shows that many who support abortion rights — and plan to vote for state-level protections for the procedure — also plan to cast their vote for Trump despite his self-professed leading role in overturning Roe v. Wade. (Ollstein, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Melania Trump Defends Abortion Rights In New Memoir
Former First Lady Melania Trump offered a passionate defense of a woman’s right to abortion, including in the late stages of pregnancy — a direct contradiction of the views of her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to excerpts of her memoir that is scheduled to be released next week. “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the former president’s wife writes in “Melania,” according to a report published by the Guardian on Wednesday. (Mehta and Jarvie, 10/2)

The New York Times: Trump Promised To Release His Medical Records. He Still Won’t Do It. 
If elected again, he would become the oldest president by the end of his term. Yet he is refusing to disclose even basic health information. (Baumgaertner and Haberman, 10/3)

The Washington Post: Vance, Walz Medical Records Improperly Accessed By VA Employees, Probe Finds
At least a dozen employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly accessed the medical records of vice-presidential nominees JD Vance and Tim Walz this summer, VA investigators found, in a violation of federal health privacy laws that is under criminal investigation. VA officials notified the Vance and Walz campaigns about the breaches after discovering the unauthorized viewing by employees at the agency’s massive health-care arm, the Veterans Health Administration, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing investigation. (Rein and Barrett, 9/30)

LAist: Dengue Reaches El Monte In ‘Extremely Rare’ Local Transmission
In L.A. County, dengue cases are typically only seen in travelers who have visited countries where dengue is found. This new case was found in an El Monte resident who had no history of travel. The department said it doesn’t appear related to the four other cases found recently in Panorama City and Baldwin Park. Although rare in the U.S., dengue is one of the most common vector-borne diseases in the world. It spreads when an infected Aedes mosquito bites a human, or when non-infected mosquitoes bite an infected person and then bite other people. It can lead to flu-like symptoms, muscle pain and mild bleeding, but cases can be more severe. (Hernández, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Salmonella Outbreak At Popular L.A. Oaxacan Restaurant Sickens 44
Dozens of cases of salmonella linked to a popular Oaxacan restaurant in the Santa Clarita Valley in mid-September resulted in its temporary closure and a lawsuit filed by a man who said a chicken mole plate made him sick. The lawsuit aimed at Madre Oaxacan Restaurant in the Valencia area comes after the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shut down the restaurant on Sept. 18 following a salmonella outbreak that sickened about 44 people. The county inspected the restaurant and slapped it with a “C” grade for multiple health code violations. (Carcamo, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: California’s Summer COVID Surge Is Over. But Expect Another Spike
California’s protracted summer COVID surge has finally ended, a welcome window that provides a key opportunity to prepare for yet another expected resurgence of transmission this autumn and winter, doctors say. ... That’s why doctors are urging everyone age 6 months and older to get an updated COVID vaccine, ideally before Halloween. And unlike last year, the new shots have arrived on time and are plentiful. (Lin II, 10/2)

Stat: CDC Testing Of Missouri's Bird Flu Case Hits Obstacles, Delaying Answers
U.S. health officials have run into obstacles in their efforts to determine whether a Missouri person infected with H5N1 bird flu passed the virus on to others, causing a delay that will likely fuel concerns about the possibility that there has been human-to-human transmission. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has blood samples from several health workers and a household contact of the Missouri case that it plans to test for antibodies that would indicate whether they too had been infected with the virus, an agency official told STAT. (Branswell, 10/2)

Stat: Marburg Virus Outbreak In Rwanda Draws Concern Over Possibility Of Spread
A large outbreak of Marburg virus in Rwanda is drawing international concern about the possibility of spread beyond the country’s borders. The number of cases detected so far, 27, already makes the outbreak one of the biggest involving Marburg on record. Nine of those individuals have died. There are currently no licensed vaccines to combat the disease. In a statement issued late Monday, the World Health Organization categorized the risk of spread to neighboring countries as high. It also suggested there is a risk of spread beyond East Africa. (Branswell, 9/30)

Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Will Tackle Transgender Rights, 'Ghost Guns' In New Term
The Supreme Court opens a new term Monday, facing major decisions on whether states can ban “gender-affirming care” for transgender teens and if the U.S. government can restrict the sale of untraceable “ghost guns.” Both cases could have a broad impact in the years ahead. (Savage, 10/3)

Los Angeles Blade: What Does Prop 3 Mean For Same-Sex Marriage In California?
In practice, Prop 3 would not change who can marry, it would only change the language of the California Constitution that still only acknowledges marriage between a man and a woman. Approving the change of language would cement the legacy of progress that has allowed same-sex and interracial couples to marry. (Palomera, 10/2)

Fresno Bee: Deaf Fresno Mothers Say Valley Children's Shut Her Out Of Child's Care. 'It Was Horrible'
A deaf Fresno mother who accompanied her teen daughter at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera for emergency surgery said what should have been a two-day stay stretched more than a week because staff left her out of important conversations. (Miller, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Shroom Yoga? This L.A. Studio Is Operating In A Psychedelic Gray Area
On a scorching Saturday afternoon in June, a handful of people slipped into a nondescript downtown L.A. studio with tinted windows, just across the way from Walt Disney Concert Hall. In the lobby, shelves displayed serums, candles and natural deodorants next to black boxes filled with magic mushroom gummies. A greeter ushered attendees into a dark windowless room with yoga mats on the carpeted floor, asking each person: “Would you like some mushroom tea?” (Lhooq, 10/3)

The Hill: Southern California Study Shows Extensive Exposure To Toxic Airborne Plasticizers
Urban populations in Southern Californian are facing chronic exposure to toxic airborne “plasticizer” compounds — two of which have already been banned from children’s products, a new study has found. Plasticizers are commonly used chemicals that serve the purpose of making materials more flexible, appearing in a wide range of products from food containers to shower curtains to gardening equipment to textiles, the authors noted. (Udasin, 10/2)

CNN: Black-Colored Plastic Used For Kitchen Utensils And Toys Linked To Banned Toxic Flame Retardants 
Black-colored plastic used in children’s toys, takeout containers, kitchen utensils and grocery meat and produce trays may contain alarming levels of toxic flame retardants that may be leaching from electronic products during recycling, a new study found. “A product with one of the highest levels of flame retardants were black plastic pirate coin beads that kids wear — they resemble Mardi Gras beads but more for costume wear,” said lead study author Megan Liu, science and policy manager for Toxic-Free Future, an environmental advocacy group. (LaMotte, 10/1)