Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Dismisses Constitutional Claim In California Pollution Case
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a red-state constitutional challenge to California’s special authority to fight air pollution. Over a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court turned away an appeal from Ohio and 16 other conservative states, which asked the court to rule “the Golden State is not a golden child.” Although Monday’s brief order closes the door on a constitutional challenge to California’s anti-pollution standards, the court on Friday cleared the way for a different, more targeted legal challenge. (Savage, 12/16)

Times of San Diego: EPA Awards California More Than $216 Million For Resilience Projects, Including In San Diego County 
The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the state of California a combined $216.5 million in order to strengthen climate resilience and reduce pollution in communities, with more than $30 million of that going to San Diego County. (Binkowski, 12/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Plans To Add Locked Psychiatric Beds To Help Most Desperately Ill
San Francisco has asked state officials for $144 million to create 175 more beds for people experiencing mental illness and addiction. The Department of Public Health submitted an application to the state this month in hopes of securing a portion of the $6.4 billion mental health bond passed by California voters in March. (Angst, 12/16)

Modern Healthcare: GoodRx Hires Wendy Barnes As CEO
More than a year after its co-founders left the company, Santa Monica-based GoodRx will have a new president and CEO. On Monday, the consumer drug pricing and digital health company announced Wendy Barnes will take over Jan. 1. Barnes most recently worked served as CEO of pharmacy benefits optimization company RxBenefits, and previously was president of pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts. She also held roles at pharmacy chain Rite Aid and drugmaker Pfizer. (Turner, 12/16)

Los Angeles Times: Southern California Doctor Sentenced To Prison In Multimillion Dollar Hospice Fraud Scheme
A Southern California doctor accused of bilking Medicare out of millions by billing for unnecessary hospice services has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison, federal prosecutors said. (Mendez, 12/16)

Los Angeles Times: 'A Necessary Evil': The Captive Dogs Whose Blood Saves Lives
Inside a subzero freezer at a Northern California pet hospital sit rows of carefully labeled bags of fresh frozen plasma. Each pouch could save a pet’s life: a retriever that ingested poison, a corgi with a bleeding disorder, a puppy with parvovirus. While the pouches each look the same, their straw-colored contents come from starkly different places. Some of the blood products are from dogs like Augustus, a 55-pound Belgian Malinois whose owner signed him up to donate blood at a canine community blood bank, which is modeled after the human volunteer system. (Gutierrez and Tchekmedyian, 12/17)

Axios: Biden's Last Effort To Boost ACA Enrollment
President Biden is making a final push to build on the Affordable Care Act, extending the enrollment period for marketplace coverage that kicks in Jan. 1 as sign-ups lag. ACA enrollment has hit new record highs each year of the Biden administration. But those gains are on shaky ground as the Trump administration prepares to take over in January. (Goldman, 12/17)

The Hill: Fewer Than Half Of Latinos In The U.S. Have Adequate Health Insurance Coverage
Latinos in the United States are less likely to have adequate health insurance than Americans overall, according to a new survey from health research nonprofit The Commonwealth Fund.  The nonprofit found that 46 percent of Latinos in the U.S. of working age have health insurance for the whole year and are not underinsured, according to the survey published Tuesday. (O'Connell-Domenech, 12/17)

LAist: Nearly 100,000 CA Veterans Aren't Enrolled In VA Health Care
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said about 85,000 California veterans are losing out on special services by not enrolling in its health insurance. Why it matters: The department is working to get more people enrolled, which comes after veterans have long raised issues about head trauma and poor mental health in general. VA insurance allows veterans to get speciality screenings to help manage those health issues, which could stem from blast exposures. (Hernández, 12/17)

Military Times: Congress Finalizes Sweeping Bill To Help Veteran Caregivers
House lawmakers on Monday finalized a sweeping veterans bill to expand caregiver benefits for elderly and infirm veterans and update medical options for veterans outside the department’s health care system, sending the legislative package to the White House to become law. The legislation was originally passed by the chamber last month but had to be reapproved this week after technical changes were added by the Senate last week. The measure now heads to the White House, where President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law in the coming days. (Shane III, 12/16)

NBC News: Democratic Senators Seek To Ax Transgender Care Ban From Defense Bill
Fourteen Democratic senators will introduce an amendment Monday evening to remove language from Congress’ massive defense spending bill that seeks to ban coverage of gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members, the office of Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., told NBC News. ... The $895 billion bill authorizes the annual budget for the Defense Department and sets defense policies for the upcoming year. (Lavietes, 12/16)

inewsource: San Diego Eviction Tracker: Thousands Of Cases, Nothing To Show
In the middle of a housing and affordability crisis, San Diego’s elected leaders wanted to know more about why people are getting kicked out of their homes. That’s why the City Council unanimously voted to start collecting data on eviction notices sent to renters. Such a database could help officials guide policy and efficiently allocate city resources. The only information available right now is the number of court filings, and records show about 750 evictions are filed every month in San Diego Superior Court. (Dulaney, 12/17)

Orange County Register: Addicts Trafficked Cross Country By ‘Army Of Fraudsters,’ New Lawsuit Alleges
California and Oklahoma are separated by more than 1,000 miles. Within that span there are hundreds — if not thousands — of addiction treatment programs. “And yet, in the last few years alone, thousands of alleged Oklahoma residents have been trafficked across the country to California under the guise of obtaining (substance use disorder) treatment,” claims a lawsuit filed in federal court Dec. 11 against two Orange County rehabs, South Coast Behavioral Health and Rad Life Recovery of Costa Mesa, as well as others. (Sforza, 12/16)

The New York Times: Drugmakers Paid PBMs Not To Restrict Opioid Prescriptions 
In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose crisis. The company said it was “putting the brakes on the opioid epidemic” by making it harder to get potentially dangerous amounts of the drugs. The announcement, which came after pressure from federal health regulators, was followed by similar declarations from the other two companies that control access to prescription drugs for most Americans. (Hamby, 12/17)

ProPublica: How Opioid Giant Endo Escaped A $7 Billion Federal Penalty 
This spring, the Justice Department announced a major victory against a drug firm that manufactured billions of opioid painkillers. Endo Health Solutions, the agency said, would face $1.5 billion in fines and forfeitures and plead guilty to a corporate criminal charge. Prosecutors said the massive fine would hold accountable a suburban Philadelphia company that profited by “misrepresenting the safety of their opioid products and using reckless marketing tactics to increase sales.” (Fernandez and McCoy, 12/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Might Walk Back Its Call For A Constitutional Convention
It’s been more than two years since Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers called for a U.S. constitutional convention, the first since 1789, to authorize new laws on gun control. No other states have supported that proposal, and on Monday a San Francisco Democrat introduced legislation to repeal it, saying it could enable a Republican-led attack on civil rights.“ The damage a Constitutional Convention could do to Californians’ basic rights is off the charts,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener. “Once it begins, extremists could easily hijack it and drive the Convention to strip protections for women, LGBTQ people, workers, immigrants, or any number of other groups, while undermining democracy and locking in the power of the largest corporations on the planet.” (Egelko, 12/16)

EdSource: Can Theater Help Prevent Violence In Schools?
In this conflict resolution program, students tap into theater skills to build empathy and manage disagreements, something many adults struggle with in our polarized world. (D'Souza, 12/17)

Axios: Gen Z Teachers Lead School Shooter Drills Amid Rising Gunfire
This year was the most active for gunfire on school grounds since 2013, when Everytown for Gun Safety started tracking data. As the threat of gun violence has persistently grown, students often learn to prepare for an active shooter from teachers who had the same hide, fight and run mentality drilled into them as children. (Lotz, 12/17)

CalMatters: Are California Jails Ready For More Inmates Under Prop. 36?
According to Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, California doesn’t have a crisis in its jails, where record numbers of people have died even as the state’s jail population shrank. “Saying people died in jails is a little bit of a misnomer,” said Barnes, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association. “People who are dying in our care, and I can’t say this any other way, they’re not dying because they’re in jail. They are dying from things that are life choices, narcotics issues, poor health, cancer, other things. (Duara, 12/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Viral Study About Black Plastic Utensils Had A Big Math Problem
Last month, people across the country tossed their spatulas into the trash after a widely-reported study found that some black plastics in kitchen utensils and other household items had dangerously high levels of flame retardants, which are associated with a host of health problems, including cancer. The problem? A simple math error overstated the risk by a factor of 10, a researcher not involved in the original study found. (Echeverria, 12/17)

CNN: Kennedy Says He’s ‘All For’ Polio Vaccine As GOP Senators Raise Questions About His Views
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to tamp down concerns about his history of vaccine skepticism as he meets with GOP senators who will vote on whether to confirm him as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy on Monday told reporters on Capitol Hill that he is “all for” the polio vaccine — comments that came hours after Trump said at a news conference that Americans are “not going to lose the polio vaccine.” (Bradner, 12/16)

The Hill: Trump Seeks To Smooth Over Concerns Over RFK Jr
President-elect Trump tried to downplay concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, telling reporters that his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary won’t be “radical.”  “I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Trump said during a wide-ranging news conference at Mar-a-Lago. “He’s going to have an open mind, or I wouldn’t have put him there.” (Weixel, 12/16)

The Hill: Trump Says There Are ‘Problems’ With Vaccines, Rejects Mandates
President-elect Trump said he thinks there are “problems” with vaccines and again drew a false connection between vaccines and autism rates on Monday.  “There are problems. We don’t do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing,” Trump said during a wide-ranging press conference at Mar-a-Lago. During the press conference, Trump again hinted that vaccines are driving up autism rates and that his administration would investigate it. (Weixel, 12/16)