San Diego Union-Tribune: Scripps Health Notifies Anthem Blue Cross Patients Of Potential Network Exit 
Scripps Health sent letters Thursday to more than 125,000 of its patients letting them know that if it is unable to broker what it considers a fair deal with their health insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, it will allow its contract with the carrier to lapse on Jan. 1, 2025. (Sisson, 10/17)

Becker's Hospital Review: 2 Men Charged With Cedars-Sinai Cyberattack
A federal grand jury indicted two Sudanese nationals for cyberattacks including a 2024 hack of Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, were charged with one count each of conspiracy to damage protected computers, the U.S. Justice Department said Oct. 16. Ahmed Salah was initially charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. The men were allegedly members of cybercriminal group Anonymous Sudan. (Bruce, 10/17)

Fresno Bee: Valley Children’s Spent $52M On Special Retirement Plans For Execs. Fresno Officials Ask Why
When Valley Children’s Hospital publicly posted its latest federal nonprofit tax filing in mid-August, the document contained details about more than $52 million it spent on sophisticated life insurance arrangements with key executives. (Galicia, 10/17)

CBS News: Sutter Health Plans To Build $67.8 Million Specialty Care Center On Elk Grove Campus
Sutter Health announced plans to construct a $67.8 million specialty care center at its Elk Grove location. The new specialty care center is projected to bring 44 more physicians to the Sutter Elk Grove Care Complex on Laguna Boulevard and expand its Sutter Urgent Care Center. (Downs, 10/17)

Becker's Hospital Review: Ascension Foundation Donates $1M For Postpartum Needs
The Ascension Foundation for Health Equity granted more than $1 million to nonprofit organizations across the U.S. to support postpartum mothers and their families. (Kuchno, 10/17)

Stat: How Tragedy Led A Former Rocker To Take On Health Care 
After his wife’s death the day after delivering their baby, D.A. Wallach began confronting what he sees as a lack of health care standards. Wallach, once the lead singer for the indie rock group Chester French, is now a partner at Time BioVentures, a Southern California venture capital firm focused on health care and life sciences. Together with Tim Wright, a pharma insider who spent decades working in drug development, the pair has invested in over a dozen startups ranging from medical devices to online mental health providers. (Facher, 10/18)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Advantage Insurers Partner With Providers
Health systems are forging partnerships with certain Medicare Advantage plans, even as increasingly frequent battles over reimbursement rates and pay policies cause them to break ties with others. Disputes over pay rates, claim denial policies and care quality benchmarks have led some health systems to drop out of Medicare Advantage networks. However, health systems are willing to partner with certain Medicare Advantage plans that disclose reasonable claim denial and prior authorization processes, invest in MA-tailored joint ventures and renegotiate reimbursement rates, system executives said. (Kacik and Hudson, 10/17)

CNBC: CVS Replaces CEO Karen Lynch With Exec David Joyner As Profits, Share Price Suffer
Longtime CVS Health executive David Joyner has replaced Karen Lynch as CEO, as the company struggles to drive higher profits and stock performance, CVS announced Friday. The move, effective Thursday, the day before the announcement, comes as CVS shares have fallen nearly 20% this year. Shares plunged about 13% in premarket trading Friday. CVS has faced challenges as higher medical costs weigh on its insurance unit, Aetna, and consumer spending drops at its retail pharmacies. In August, the company slashed its full-year profit guidance and said it would cut $2 billion in costs over the next several years. (Salinas, 10/18)

Stat: California Developers Target 340B Drug Discounts, AIDS Healthcare Foundation
Californians are about to vote on an aggressive policy proposals to reform a drug discount program that is a key source of revenue for hospitals and health clinics. The group behind it? Apartment builders. (Wilkerson, 10/18)

Politico: California Republican Assembly Candidate Pleaded Guilty To Welfare Fraud 
Denise Aguilar Mendez, a Republican candidate running for a California Assembly seat, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of welfare fraud in 2020, court records show. Mendez is a conservative activist who founded the anti-vaccine group Freedom Angels and attended the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. She is challenging Democrat Rhodesia Ransom in the race for outgoing Democratic Rep. Carlos Villapudua’s Stockton-area Assembly seat. (Katzenberger, 10/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Prop 36 Marks A Rare Split Between Gavin Newsom And Prison Guard Union
Gov. Gavin Newsom is the most prominent critic of Proposition 36, a measure on the November ballot that would increase sentences for drug possession and repeated thefts of $950 or more. He has said it would promote “mass incarceration” — though he has also said he lacks the “bandwidth” to campaign against it. One of the leading financial supporters of Prop 36, meanwhile, is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union representing the 26,000 guards in the state’s prisons. (Egelko, 10/17)

Bloomberg: Trump Says He Would Consider Religious Exemptions To Covering IVF
Former President Donald Trump said he would consider religious exemptions for his campaign pledge to cover the costs of in vitro fertilization, a concession to some of his conservative Christian supporters who oppose the fertility procedure. “Well, you know, I haven’t been asked that, but it sounds to me like a pretty good idea, frankly,” the Republican nominee said in an interview with Catholic news channel EWTN Thursday. (Lai, 10/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: California School District Adopts New Policy On Transgender Students
A Southern California school district that adopted a controversial parental notification policy last year requiring educators to report transgender students to their parents passed a new policy Thursday night — in response to a state ban against such policies — that opponents say will still forcibly out children and potentially put them at risk. ... Thursday night, the Chino Valley Board of Education voted 4-1 to pass the “No Deception” policy, which was approved after more than an hour of raucous and frequently vitriolic public comment, including dozens of students speaking against the rule. (Allday, 10/17)

The Desert Sun: Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs And Vetoes Various LGBTQ Bills
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed bills requiring insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization for the LGBTQ+ community and prohibiting bans of books with LGBTQ+ content. (Mason, 10/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump Claim Against SJSU Player Refuted After He Pledges To Ban Trans Athletes From Women’S Sports
Former President Donald Trump, referencing a play in a San Jose State women’s volleyball match last week, says he would ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports if elected. San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit last month seeking to overturn NCAA guidelines that allow transgender women to play under certain conditions. When she joined the suit, Slusser named a teammate she said is transgender. (Ingemi, 10/17)

AP: Teen Smoking And Other Tobacco Use Drop To Lowest Level In 25 Years, CDC Reports 
Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday. There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999. (Stobbe, 10/17)

The Oaklandside: A Castlemont Graduate Helps Young People Get Answers To Their Questions About Gun Violence
Jalesha Fitzpatrick spent many afterschool hours in Youth Alive’s Teens on Target program at Castlemont High School, advising young people about gun violence and violence prevention efforts in Oakland. She never expected the gun violence she spoke about each day would hit so close to home. A few years ago, her dad was shot in front of her and her older brother while they were sitting in the car at their grandmother’s home in West Oakland, she said. Their dad survived and is OK now, but it drove home for her how prevalent gun violence can be. After her nervous system returned to normal, Jalesha reflected on how she could use the experience in her work with Youth Alive. (McBride, 10/17)

Bloomberg: Instagram Video Warns Teens About Sextortion
Instagram is sending a video to millions of teenagers to warn them about sextortion, a cybercrime that has proliferated on the app and in some cases has driven young users to suicide. The video, which opens with the line “Let’s talk about sextortion,” will be pushed to teens and young adults in the US, the UK and Canada on Thursday, Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. said in a statement. (Carville, 10/17)

EdSource: Nature’s Classroom: Why Preschoolers Need More Time Outdoors  
Amid the post-pandemic rise in behavioral issues, some suggest that outdoor education might be an antidote to shattered attention spans and frayed nerves. (D'Souza, 10/18)

CNBC: Merck Says Experimental RSV Treatment Protected Infants In Trial
Merck on Thursday said its experimental treatment designed to protect infants from respiratory syncytial virus showed positive results in a mid- to late-stage trial, bringing the company one step closer to filing for approval of the shot. (Constantino, 10/17)

NBC News: New Heart Stents For Infants Mean Kids Could Avoid Series Of Surgeries
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a heart stent made specifically for infants and young children, a device that could help kids born with certain congenital heart defects avoid a series of open heart operations over their childhoods. About 40,000 babies are born with congenital heart defects in the U.S. each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some cases, those defects are treated with stents, which prop open blood vessels, ensuring that blood can properly flow through them. (Syal and Herzberg, 10/17)

Capitol Weekly: The Forgotten Report That Upended Mental Health Care In California
Imagine that you’re confused, wearing hospital-issued pajamas, and seated before a judge who has convened a hearing focused on your mental state. A physician, a cop and maybe a member of your family have gathered in the conference room and describe how you’ve been acting. Although your mind is spinning, you try to explain yourself. (Morain, 10/17)

Stat: Chickenpox, Shingles, Alzheimer’s? Evidence Mounts For A Viral Cause Of Dementia
Pascal Geldsetzer believes in open access, in disseminating science as quickly as it happens. Even so, last summer, as he uploaded the surprising results of his latest study to the MedRxiv preprint server, the Stanford University epidemiologist was feeling something other than the usual excitement. “I was scared to put this up because it’s such a different approach from what’s generally done in epidemiology and medicine,” he said. (Molteni, 10/18)

Voice of OC: Santa Ana Ramps Up Crackdowns On Homeless Encampments, Clears Railroad
Santa Ana police officers are clearing out homeless encampments throughout the Union Pacific Railroad multiple days a week as they ramp up cleanup efforts along the privately owned tracks. ... City Manager Alvaro Nuñez said at Tuesday’s city council meeting that since last month police officers have been going multiple times a week for the last month to help cleanup the railroad and are taking a zero tolerance approach to the homeless people out by the tracks. (Gradillas, 10/17)

Voice of San Diego: Why Supe Candidates’ Battle Over Homelessness Is A Leadership Test
For years, many San Diegans focused on addressing the region’s homelessness crisis have wondered: What would it take for the county to effectively lead on the issue? That question has taken center stage in the high-stakes battle between County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer to represent many of the county’s coastal communities. (Halverstadt, 10/17)

Reuters: Families Of Fentanyl Victims Ask US For China Tariffs Over Opioid Crisis
A group of families whose loved ones died of fentanyl overdoses filed a petition with the office of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Thursday, requesting a probe into China's alleged role in fueling the U.S. synthetic opioid crisis. The petition was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a statute that allows the U.S. to impose sanctions on foreign countries that violate trade agreements or hurt U.S. commerce. The families are seeking trade countermeasures that include tariffs of at least $50 billion on Chinese merchandise. (Gottesdiener and Martina, 10/17)

Reuters: Cows Dead From Bird Flu Rot In California As Heat Bakes Dairy Farms 
Cows in California are dying at much higher rates from bird flu than in other affected states, industry and veterinary experts said, and some carcasses have been left rotting in the sun as rendering plants struggle to process all the dead animals. Carcasses left in the open and picked over by scavengers could facilitate the spread of bird flu to other birds and wild animals or degrade the carcasses such that they cannot be processed for rendering, experts told Reuters. (Douglas, 10/17)

CIDRAP: CDC Confirms Recent Cases In California Dairy Workers As Virus Strikes 15 More Farms 
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed 5 suspected H5 avian flu cases in California dairy workers, according to updated tables from the CDC and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). California now has 11 H5 cases in dairy workers. (Schnirring, 10/17)

Politico: Avian Flu Spreading In California Raises Pandemic Threat To Humans
Health officials across the U.S. are working to prevent a potentially dangerous combination virus as avian flu rips through one of the nation’s largest milk-producing regions during the height of flu season. Public health experts have long warned that avian flu poses a significant pandemic threat to humans, and the number of infections among dairy workers in California continues to grow. The timing of the outbreak will soon collide with the seasonal flu, complicating efforts to track bird flu and raising the risk that the two viruses could mix, potentially creating a virulent combo that could spread beyond dairy workers to the rest of the population. (Bluth, Lim and Brown, 10/17)

NPR: This Year's Flu Shot Protects Against 3 Strains Instead Of 4 
This year’s flu shot will be missing a strain of influenza it’s protected against for more than a decade. That’s because there have been no confirmed flu cases caused by the Influenza B/Yamagata lineage since spring 2020. And the Food and Drug Administration decided this year that the strain now poses little to no threat to human health. Scientists have concluded that widespread physical distancing and masking practiced during the early days of COVID-19 appear to have pushed B/Yamagata into oblivion. (Boden, 10/17)

AP: Whooping Cough Is At A Decade-High Level In US 
Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday. There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800. (Shastri, 10/17)

Sacramento Bee: California Must Protect Essential Health Care. That's Where Prop. 35 Comes In
With less than a month before Election Day, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California is hard at work to ensure reproductive health care is a fundamental right; to ensure that extreme anti-abortion politicians stay out of elected office; and to restore essential rights that have been stripped from too many over the last two years. (Jodi Hicks, 10/15)

Los Angeles Times: Endorsement: No On Proposition 35. Voters Shouldn't Decide Complicated Healthcare Tax Policy 
Proposition 35 is the most impenetrable measure on the Nov. 5 ballot. It involves a tax on managed-care organizations, Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for medical providers, federal healthcare funding and the state budget. For that reason alone, voters should reject it. The average person, no matter how intelligent, can’t become expert enough in a month to cast a carefully considered vote. We elect a full-time Legislature, and allow it to hire top-notch staffers, to make decisions about this kind of granular policy. (10/12)

Times of San Diego: I'm A Candidate For Mayor, And Here's My Strategy On Homelessness
As a U.S. Marine officer with experience in humanitarian missions, I have a realistic and effective strategy to combat homelessness in San Diego. Instead of focusing only on temporary shelters, my plan emphasizes wrap-around and transitional services crucial for long-term success. By investing in permanent supportive and affordable housing, we can cut taxpayer costs significantly while providing a stable environment for our homeless neighbors to access services, find jobs and, once again, become contributing members of our community. (Larry Turner, 10/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: The Solution To Unsheltered California Homelessness? Interim Housing
California doesn’t have a homelessness crisis; it has a homelessness policy crisis. Unsheltered homelessness is the most visible, the most inhumane and, frankly, the most solvable part of our homelessness issue. And it is a uniquely California problem. Half of the nation’s unsheltered population resides in our state. Ending the fiscally devastating and morally reprehensible catastrophe of people sleeping on California’s sidewalks is well within our capabilities — and doing so would cost our society half as much as we spend pushing the problem around. (Elizabeth Funk, 10/13)

Los Angeles Times: Menopausal Women Have A Lot At Stake In This Election
Perhaps you’ve heard: Menopause is having a moment. Celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore have begun speaking out about coping with symptoms and self-worth. Halle Berry shouted from the steps of the Capitol: “I’m in menopause, OK?!” As menopause advocates, we have long seen this “moment” as overdue, spurring necessary conversations for millions who would otherwise suffer through menopause in silence and shame. It’s a relief to see the topic discussed openly — even if some of the conversations are sparked by odd viral moments on the campaign trail, such as a recent remark by a Republican Senate candidate who thinks it’s “a little crazy” that women past 50 would vote on the issue of reproductive rights. (Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and Tamsen Fadal, 10/17)

Sacramento Bee: There's A Remarkably Simple Solution To California's Primary Care Physician Shortage
Recently, a couple with several chronic medical conditions asked one of us for advice. “We loved our primary care physician of 20-plus years, but she retired. She was thorough, compassionate and skilled. We found a new doctor at a different practice, but he seems rushed, harried and just not-that-interested.” (Richard L. Kravitz and Anthony Jerant, 10/16)

Times of San Diego: New Language In California Law Brings Dignity, Compassion To Those With Behavioral Health Conditions
A new report from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on the mental health impact of parenting is the latest call to action in what is broadly recognized as a national mental health crisis. From the toll of social media on children’s mental health to the epidemic of opioid addiction, there have never been more reasons to talk about mental health and substance use. By talking about these issues in the right way — and emphasizing that people aren’t solely defined by their behavioral health conditions — we can ensure more people get the help they need. (Dr. Ryan Quist, 10/14)

Los Angeles Times: At LAFD Station 11, One Of The Busiest In The Nation, Few Fires, But No End To Overdose Emergencies
If you spend much time in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, you will notice, amid the clamor of buses and trucks and car horns and vendors hawking their goods, a nearly steady symphony of sirens. They scream day and night in rapid response to an endless run of emergencies, many of them in and around MacArthur Park. But it’s not usually a fire that LAFD Station 11 is responding to. Through August of this year, there have been 599 drug overdose calls, compared with 36 runs for structure fires. (Steve Lopez, 10/12)