LAist: Kaiser Mental Health Workers Say They Are Prepared To Go On Strike
Some 2,400 Kaiser mental health workers in Southern California say they’re prepared to go on strike if the health care provider can't meet demands aimed at reducing employee turnover and improving patient care. More than 80% of caregivers — including psychologists, social workers and marriage and family therapists — signed the strike authorization petition. The National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents the Kaiser employees, said the HMO has so far rejected three main contract points. That includes increased time for caregivers to work on patients’ files outside of their scheduled appointments, better pay and restoration of pensions. (Garrova, 10/3)

San Diego Union-Tribune: For The First Time, UC San Diego Names A Woman Dean Of School Of Medicine 
A prominent gastroenterologist who has been running one of the largest academic medical departments in the country has been named dean of the School of Medicine at UC San Diego, becoming the first woman to hold that position. (Robbins, 10/3)

Becker's Hospital Review: Women Physicians Flock To High-Paying Specialty Fields
More women physicians are entering high-paying specialty fields, a recent study found. The study, published Sept. 30 in JAMA, looked at 490,188 students in the physician pipeline from 2008 to 2022. Researchers used data from Doximity to define high- and low-paying specialties. High-paying specialties were the surgical fields of neurosurgery, ophthalmology, orthopedic surgery, otorhinolaryngology, integrated plastic surgery, general surgery, integrated  thoracic surgery, urology and integrated vascular surgery; and the nonsurgical fields of anesthesiology, dermatology, nuclear medicine, radiation oncology and diagnostic radiology. (Taylor, 10/3)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealthcare Sues Over Medicare Advantage Ratings Downgrade
UnitedHealthcare has filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, alleging the government agency lowered its Medicare Advantage star ratings based on one test phone call that lasted less than 10 minutes. The insurer is the latest to sue CMS over star ratings. (DeSilva, 10/3)

Stat: Medicare Advantage Market Expected To Grow In 2025, Despite Big Changes From Insurers
Next year’s Medicare Advantage market will be two things at once: remarkably stable broadly, but rife with changes under the surface. Health insurance companies will still offer older adults a lot of plan choices with low, or completely free, premiums. That’s why the federal government expects enrollment in the $500 billion Medicare Advantage program to grow once again in 2025 — a stark contrast from insurers’ cries that modest payment reforms would damage them and seniors’ options. (Bannow and Herman, 10/4)

Sacramento Bee: How Would Sacramento Mayoral Hopefuls Address Homelessness?
Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s successor takes office Dec. 10 and will inherit a city with roughly 1,300 shelter beds — virtually all of which opened under his tenure. They will face a city with more than 2,500 people and nearly 850 families on shelter wait lists and a looming $77 million city budget deficit will hinder the council’s ability to open more beds. Both candidates, Assemblyman Kevin McCarty and Flojaune Cofer, facing off in the Nov. 5 election, have proposed the city open sanctioned campgrounds where people can live in trailers, tiny homes or tents with water, food and bathrooms as they await permanent housing. (Clift, 10/3)

Stat: Savings From Drug Pricing Law Will Be Smaller Than Expected: CBO
A key aspect of the Democrat-passed law to lower drug prices is significantly more expensive to the government than expected, according to nonpartisan budget experts in Congress. The redesign of the Medicare Part D drug benefit will cost $10 billion to $20 billion more next year than the Congressional Budget Office initially projected. That office estimates that a separate recently announced program to pay insurers to lower drug premiums will cost $5 billion. (Wilkerson, 10/3)

Fierce Healthcare: GAO Wants CMS To Take Deeper Look At Hospital Price Transparency
The Biden administration could stand to take a firmer hand on hospital price transparency, especially when it is unclear whether the price data being published are even accurate, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote in a Wednesday report. On instruction from Congress, the GAO conducted a review of the requirements, the CMS’ enforcement and whether the agency’s policy was successfully serving patients, payers and researchers. (Muoio, 10/3)

NBC News: GOP Senator Eyes Health Care Overhaul And Extending Trump Tax Cuts In One Big 2025 Bill
As Donald Trump calls for overhauling the Affordable Care Act with a new health care system, a Republican senator running for an influential leadership position says the party should combine that pursuit with a major tax bill in the new year. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told NBC News after the vice presidential debate in New York on Tuesday night that if voters elect Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress, Republicans will be able to “make health care more affordable, more tailored and more personalized than the one-size-fits-all option,” referring to the ACA, or Obamacare. (Haake and Kapur, 10/2)

CalMatters: Legislators Could Override Nearly Every Newsom Veto. Why Don’t They?
Nearly all of the 189 bills vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this year passed the Legislature with support from more than two-thirds of lawmakers — meaning the same votes from those legislators would be enough to override the governor’s veto. But that almost never happens. In fact, the last time the Legislature overrode a governor’s veto was 1979.So why don’t legislators fight for the bills that have such broad support? (Kamal, 10/3)

Capitol Weekly: The Growing Cost Of Health Care Continues To Vex State Policymakers
In a sign of the times, Capitol Weekly’s annual health care conference on Thursday focused broadly on expenses and efficiency, befitting for an American health care system that has become one of the most expensive in the world. Keynoting the event was Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg), the former longtime chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, who noted that there are some estimates that 20 to 30 percent of health care spending is wasted. (Joseph, 10/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: Report: Trump Refused Disaster Aid To California For Political Reasons
Former President Donald Trump initially refused to send federal disaster aid to California after devastating wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic bent, according to a new report based on interviews with two former White House aides. Politico’s E&E News reported Thursday that Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy at the National Security Council at the time, had to convince the former president to provide funding for California wildfire relief by showing him voter polls in Orange County, where more people had voted for him than in the entire state of Iowa. A second former aide confirmed Harvey’s statement. (Duggan, 10/3)

Modern Healthcare: How Harris, Trump May Affect ACA Markets Post-2024 Election
The 2024 elections hold the possibility of dramatic changes for the health insurance sector as the presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump reveals very different visions for the future. Yet the Democrat Harris and the Republican Trump may not act as expected when they confront key issues from the White House. And the outcome of the congressional elections that determine control of the House and Senate will pose different obstacles and opportunities to whoever is the new president. (McAuliff, 10/3)

The Washington Post: With Races Tight, Some House Republicans Tout ‘Pro-Choice’ Credentials
A small group of House Republicans will spend the run-up to Election Day pushing an unexpected message: support for abortion rights. With control of the House on the line, Republican lawmakers running in districts that Joe Biden won in the 2020 presidential race have moderated their message on abortion — including, in some cases, using the term “pro-choice.” (Alfaro, 10/3)

The Hill: Trump On Melania's Abortion Rights Comment: 'You Have To Stick With Your Heart'
Former President Trump said in an interview that he told Melania Trump that she’s “got to write what you believe” regarding her apparent pro-choice stance on abortion in her memoir that’s set to release next week.“ We spoke about it. And I said, you have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell what you to do. You have to write what you believe,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bill Melugin in an interview that aired Thursday. (Ventura, 10/3)

AP: Abortion Rights Groups Have Big Fundraising Lead 
Abortion-rights ballot measure supporters across the country have raised nearly eight times as much as groups campaigning against the amendments on the November ballots. But that advantage may not translate into a huge benefit down the stretch in Florida, the most expensive of the nine statewide campaigns to enshrine abortion rights into state constitutions. (Mulvihill, 10/4)

Voice of OC: OC Secret Settlement With Pandemic Meal Providers Cost Taxpayers Over $9 Million 
County leaders quietly settled a dispute with two of their largest nonprofit meal providers last year – one that ended up costing taxpayers over $9 million and never got publicly discussed. It’s the second time in two months that Orange County leaders have faced questions over how well they oversee contracts amidst a lawsuit with a different nonprofit that county attorneys say embezzled over $10 million meant to go toward feeding seniors. (Biesiada, 10/3)

AP: Remember The Shortage Of Medical Gowns During COVID? Feds Spending $350 Million For Stockpile
Six U.S. companies will spend at least $350 million to manufacture medical gowns to store in the Strategic National Stockpile, years after doctors and nurses working in hospitals found themselves without the equipment while COVID-19 raged. The purchase of the gowns is one of the final steps toward shoring up the personal protective equipment in the stockpile after it was depleted just weeks into the COVID pandemic. Equipment had not been regularly restocked in the years before the crisis began. (Seitz, 10/3)

CBS News: Flu Vaccine Might Be Less Effective This Year, New CDC Report Suggests 
The effectiveness of this year's influenza vaccine was lower in South America than last season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday, which might be a clue to how much protection the shots could offer people in the U.S. this winter. Vaccine effectiveness was 34.5% against hospitalization, according to interim estimates from a new article published by the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, among high-risk groups like young children, people with preexisting conditions and older adults. That means, vaccinated people in those groups were 34.5% less likely than unvaccinated people to get sick enough to go to the hospital. (Tin, 10/3)

ABC News: Flu Vaccine Lowered Risk Of Hospitalization In Southern Hemisphere By 35%: CDC
This year's flu vaccine significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization in the Southern Hemisphere but wasn't as effective as the vaccine used in the prior season, according to an early study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Thursday. Countries in the Southern Hemisphere experience their flu season before countries in the Northern Hemisphere. (Benadjaoud and Kekatos, 10/3)

Reuters: Gilead To Donate Remdesivir For Emergency Use Against Marburg Disease In Rwanda 
California-based Gilead Sciences said on Thursday it would donate about 5,000 vials of its antiviral drug remdesivir to the Rwanda Medical Supply for emergency use in response to the Marburg virus outbreak. The drug is being supplied in conjunction with Rwanda's health ministry and the Africa Centers for Disease Control, Gilead said. (10/3)

Reuters: WHO Approves First Mpox Diagnostic Test For Emergency Use 
The World Health Organization authorized Abbott Laboratories' mpox diagnostic test for emergency use on Thursday, the first such approval in the agency's effort to bolster testing capabilities in countries facing outbreaks of the disease. The real-time PCR test, Alinity m MPXV assay, enables detection of mpox virus DNA from human skin lesion swabs, the WHO said, adding that it was designed for use by trained clinical laboratory personnel. (10/3)

Devex: The Majority Of Mpox Cases Can't Be Tracked
As cases of mpox steadily increase across the African continent, some 68% of them don’t have an epidemiological link — meaning they’re popping up among people that health workers aren’t monitoring and who aren’t known to have been in contact with previously identified cases. “This is a major concern,” said Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director General Dr. Jean Kaseya during a press briefing, noting that there are concerning gaps in the continental response in areas of surveillance, contact tracing, and data collection. (Jerving, 10/2)

San Diego Union-Tribune: First Phase Of CDC Survey On Health Impacts Of Sewage Crisis Launching 
People who live and work near the U.S.-Mexico border have complained for years about the ill effects from the cross-border pollution: noxious odors, headaches, breathing difficulties, nausea, stomach ailments. They now will have a face-to-face opportunity to tell the nation’s public health agency how the toxic mix of sewage and other contaminants that spill into the Tijuana River Valley affects them. (Murga, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Time And Funding Are Running Out For Little Tokyo Senior Meal Program
Every weekday morning, drivers arrive at the Little Tokyo Towers at 10 a.m. carrying precious cargo: seniors’ meals individually wrapped in tinfoil. Not too salty, not too sweet, each bento box is carefully portioned by food group to meet federal nutrition standards. Since 1976, Little Tokyo Senior Nutrition Services has sought to address food insecurity and social isolation among Asian American seniors in Los Angeles. Its meals are sold for $3.50 each and offered for free to those unable to pay. (Deng, 10/4)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Is Right To Crack Down On Norwalk For Banning Homeless Shelters
What was the Norwalk City Council thinking? Los Angeles County had 75,000 homeless people at last count. Voters have repeatedly said in polls and surveys that reducing homelessness should be among the government’s top priorities, and people want to see humane solutions, such as more housing and shelters. So what did Norwalk leaders do? In August, they adopted a 45-day moratorium on homeless shelters and supportive housing. Even after Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta warned the ban violated several state planning and fair housing laws, Norwalk leaders went ahead and voted in September to extend the moratorium to August 2025 — blocking Los Angeles County from launching a new effort to move people living in an encampment along the 105 Freeway into a nearby motel. (10/4)

Orange County Register: No On Proposition 35. Let The Legislature Figure Out How To Fund Medi-Cal. 
This thing sounds like the wrong way to fix the Medi-Cal funding problem. Vote no on Prop. 35. (10/3)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Proposition 35 Could Take Funding From Valuable Health Programs 
In a huge win for California children and families, this year Sacramento elected leaders decided to include funding in the state budget to protect Medi-Cal coverage for our state’s babies, toddlers and youngest children, helping to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles that would otherwise cause 1.2 million children to lose their access to health coverage. (Mayra E. Alvarez, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Endorsement: Yes On Proposition 3. Remove Same-Sex Bigotry From The California Constitution
California has changed since 2008 when it comes to attitudes about same-sex marriage, and that’s all to the good. Despite voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president that year, the state’s electorate also passed Proposition 8, a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Of course, those were different times. Even Obama said at the time that marriage was between a man and a woman. It didn’t take long for him and the California electorate to acknowledge that marriage is a right that is fundamental to all people. (9/30)

Los Angeles Times: Women Doctors Are More Effective. We Need More Of Them
“When will I see the doctor?” Most female doctors have been asked this question many times. It feels like a slight — a failure to recognize the struggle it took to get to where they are, a fight that is far from over once a woman has her medical degree. Women now make up more than half of medical students but only about 37% of practicing doctors. That is partly because the makeup of the medical workforce lags that of the student body. But it’s also because persistent sexism drives higher attrition among women in medicine. (David Weill, 10/4)

Times of San Diego: San Diego's EMS System Is Now A Model Of Collaboration And Excellence
San Diego’s emergency medical services system stands as a testament to the power of collaboration and innovative leadership, resulting in unprecedented levels of service for our community. Under the guidance of our dedicated fire chiefs and in partnership with Falck Mobile Health, San Diego’s EMS system has provided residents with the best care possible, even in the most challenging times. (Bob Ilko, 9/29)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Offering Children’s Health Care Without Borders Is Our Speciality 
In the nearly 50 years of caring for children of the South Bay, I’ve come to understand that there is no border that separates children’s health issues. As a pediatrician, I have seen how a child’s place of birth or residence should never determine their access to quality health care. (Leonard Kornreich, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Why Adults Shouldn't Worry When Kids Are Gender-Nonconforming
I was having brunch recently with my old friend Dan. Halfway through his breakfast burrito, he casually mentioned that his youngest child had started identifying as nonbinary. I’d known Brady since early childhood, and they had always known their own mind and been unafraid to speak it. That they were owning their identity with such ease — bypassing the decades of confusion I went through before realizing I was trans — felt like cause for celebration. (Oliver Radclyffe, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Is Flatly Lying About Saving The ACA And Beating COVID
My favorite Lily Tomlin line is this one: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” I love it more today than ever, because it applies so perfectly to how we must respond to the campaign claims of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Especially Trump’s assertions about his role — heroic, in his vision — in “saving” the Affordable Care Act and fighting the COVID pandemic. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Melania Trump's Abortion Defense Shows How The GOP Ignores Women
It pays to listen to women. Republicans have repeatedly ignored that adage, as evident in their demolition of Roe vs. Wade, opposition to IVF and contraception, and derogatory comments about “childless cat ladies” and “women past 50.” Thursday morning delivered the biggest indicator yet that the MAGA party is losing female voters by the minute when former First Lady Melania Trump delivered a vehemently pro-choice message on her X account. (Lorraine Ali, 10/3)