Modesto Bee: Sutter Health To Open New Urgent Care In Riverbank
People in Riverbank will have more access to primary and urgent care with construction of a 10,000-square-foot center. But residents will have to wait more than a year for the new health services. Sutter Health announced Tuesday that it signed a lease for a care center at 1901 Claribel Road, not far from the new Costco in Riverbank. (Carlson, 5/20)

Becker's Hospital Review: How 4 Systems Are Investing In Specialty Pharmacy Services
Health systems nationwide are making investments in specialty pharmacy and centralized pharmacy services to help enhance care for patients, streamline operations and improve medication access. Here are some of the systems that plan to launch specialty pharmacies in late 2025 and 2026. (Murphy, 5/20)

Modern Healthcare: Trump Warns GOP Hardliners: 'Don't F*** Around With Medicaid'
President Donald Trump warned holdout House Republicans not to tank his top legislative priority by demanding deeper Medicaid cuts during a private session with GOP lawmakers Tuesday. According to Republicans who attended the meeting in the Capitol basement, Trump offered a simple message to hard-line conservatives threatening to vote against the bill: "Don't f*** around with Medicaid." (McAuliff, 5/20)

Politico: Republicans Close In On 'Big, Beautiful' Deal
House leaders are rushing to notch a deal with the various factions ahead of a scheduled 1 a.m. Rules Committee meeting, where the bill will be readied for floor consideration. Johnson has imposed a Memorial Day deadline for a final House vote and is holding out hope that things could be wrapped up as soon as Wednesday. (Bade and Hill, 5/20)

Fierce Healthcare: Catholic Health System Leaders Sound Alarm About Medicaid Cuts
Cutting funds to Medicaid will have a significant impact on people's access to care, a group of Catholic, nonprofit health systems said this week. In a Tuesday briefing hosted by the Catholic Health Association of the United States featuring members from Trinity Health, SSM Health, Providence and Ascension, hospital leaders referred to the “moral imperative” that they and Congress share to preserve the country’s safety net. (Gliadkovskaya, 5/20)

Axios: Tax Bill Would Cut Availability Of Med School Loans Amid Doctor Shortage
A little-discussed provision on student loan policies in President Trump's massive budget bill would restrict borrowing for medical school and possibly exacerbate the country's physician shortage. (Goldman, 5/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Experts See Risks In FDA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Limits
In a significant shift of federal vaccine policy, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that access to updated COVID-19 vaccines this fall will be limited to older adults and individuals with certain medical conditions, drawing both praise and concern from Bay Area infectious disease experts. Under the revised framework, only seniors and those with high-risk medical conditions — including diabetes, obesity and mental health disorders like depression — will be eligible for updated COVID-19 vaccines this fall. (Vaziri, 5/20)

Stat: Worried Pediatricians Question New FDA Covid Vaccine Guidance 
A new framework for Covid-19 vaccines announced by Food and Drug Administration leaders Tuesday suggests the agency will no longer approve new Covid vaccines for healthy individuals under 65, including babies, without data from new randomized clinical trials showing their benefit. (McFarling, 5/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid Rates Are Low Right Now, But Doctors Are Vigilant For A Summer Rise
The Covid-19 virus in the U.S. has largely faded from view. But it hasn’t faded away. National wastewater data shows low Covid-19 activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The weekly reported Covid-19 deaths in April were slightly down compared with the same time a year earlier, federal data shows. Still, more than 300 Covid-19-related deaths were reported weekly as recently as mid-April. (Abbott, 5/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘Don’t Change Course:’ San Diego County Leaders Celebrate A Drop In Homelessness
“The data released today by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness confirm that our comprehensive strategy to reduce homelessness and build more affordable housing is working,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement on Tuesday. “But this is not the time to take the foot off the gas. When something is working, you don’t change course.” (Nelson, Murga, and Diehl, 5/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego County Gives Final Approval To Homeless Camping Ban
San Diego County has given final approval to an updated camping ban that boosts penalties for starting outdoor fires in unincorporated areas. (Nelson, 5/20)

Los Angeles Times: Failure Of Skid Row Landlord 'Canary In The Coal Mine' For Other Homeless Housing In Los Angeles, Report Says
The failure of one of Skid Row’s largest homeless housing providers represents a dire warning for the viability of supportive housing in Los Angeles, according to a new report on the organization’s demise. Released Wednesday, Redesign Required: Lessons for Permanent Supportive Housing from Skid Row Housing Trust Buildings, concludes that low and inconsistent rental subsidies and other structural problems in L.A.’s homeless housing systems played a key role in the trust’s 2023 collapse. (Dillon, 5/21)

LAist: LA City Council Votes To Address Homelessness Data Problems
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to address inconsistent and fragmented data issues within the city’s homeless services system. The vote directs the city’s chief legislative analyst to find data silos and databases that may have a connection to homelessness but aren’t included in the Homeless Management Information System — a regional database service providers use to track people experiencing homelessness. (Sievertson, 5/20)

Times of San Diego: Elton John Concert At Petco Park Raised $11.5 Million To Fight Cancer
Elton John’s Petco Park concert raised more than $11.5 million in support of San Diego-based Curebound’s fight against cancer, the nonprofit announced Tuesday. ... Since launching in 2022, Concert for Cures has raised $20 million to support early-phase adult and pediatric cancer research at Southern California’s research institutions. (Vigil, 5/20)

Voice of OC: Orange County Confronts Dwindling Funding For Mental Health
Orange County Supervisors are starting to grapple with what the future for mental healthcare could look like as they lose funding for key programs, opening questions on just how much support they’ll be able to fund. The big shift came after voters approved Proposition 1 last March, which changed how counties were allowed to spend millions of mental health dollars, forcing them to reallocate some money for homeless services and housing according to the state’s legislative analysts office. (Biesiada, 5/21)

Bay Area News Group: Public Calls For Replacing Santa Rita Jail Health Care Provider As Contract Nears End 
Concerns over inmate care at Santa Rita Jail have increased public pressure for Alameda County to part ways with its current medical provider. With the contract set to expire, supervisors have begun to weigh their options. (Lopez, 5/21)

East Bay Times: Court Rules Against California Schools District’s Ban Of Critical Race Theory 
A Temecula school district policy banning critical race theory violates the California constitution, a state appeals court has ruled in reversing a 2024 court decision. The Monday, May 19, ruling found that the resolution — passed in late 2022 at the first meeting after a conservative school board majority was elected — was vague and unconstitutional. (Darling, 5/21)

Los Angeles Times: Edison Executives Made False Statements On Wildfire Risks, Suit Claims
Edison International officers and directors misled the company’s investors about the effectiveness of its efforts to reduce the risk of wildfire in the months and years before the devastating Eaton fire, a shareholder lawsuit claims. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, points to repeated statements that the utility made in federal regulatory reports that said it had reduced the risk of a catastrophic wildfire by more than 85% since 2018 by increasing equipment inspections, tree trimming and other work aimed at stopping fires. (Petersen, 5/21)

Los Angeles Times: Signs Point To Human Error In Altadena Evacuation Failure
It is perhaps the most pressing unanswered question from Los Angeles’ January firestorm: How did officials fail to issue timely evacuation alerts for residents in west Altadena, where all but one of 18 Eaton fire deaths occurred? Nearly five months after the deadly fire decimated Altadena, two possible scenarios have emerged as to what went wrong that chaotic night. Either there was some human error along the chain of command issuing evacuations or there was some type of technical error in sending the alerts. (Toohey and Jarvie, 5/21)

NBC News: Cucumbers Recalled After More Than 20 People Are Sickened In Salmonella Outbreak
The Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of cucumbers grown by Bedner Growers and distributed by Fresh Start Produce Sales because of a multistate Salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 20 people, including in California. The FDA said in a statement Monday that the cucumbers have been distributed to restaurants, wholesalers, retailers and distribution centers since April 29. The FDA is working to determine where the potentially contaminated vegetables were sold. (Alsharif, 5/20)

NBC News: Valley Fever In California: Climate Change Could Lead To More Fungal Infections
Valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, is caused by inhaling coccidioides spores, a type of fungi endemic to the hot, dry climate of the southwestern United States. Climate change is creating drier soils that are inching farther east, expanding the range of the fungi. Valley fever is increasingly being diagnosed outside its usual territory and cases have been rising across the Western U.S. While Arizona still sees the highest number each year, California is closing the gap. (Sullivan, 5/20)

CalMatters: Trump Is Trying To Rapidly Deport Immigrants Far From The Border. It Isn’t Working In California
The Trump administration is backing off a push to rapidly deport three Guatemalan day laborers who were detained 200 miles north of the Mexico border after a federal judge blocked it from fast-tracking their removal. The administration wanted to deport the men under a new policy that it adapted from one that previously was used nearly exclusively at the border, and only for immigrants who recently arrived in the U.S. Advocates said the case had the potential to signal whether the Trump administration could carry out its promised mass, rapid deportations across California. (Fry, Al Elew, and Olmos, 5/20)

CBS News: RFK Jr. Tells Farmers, GOP Not To Worry About His Report Targeting Pesticides
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought Tuesday to reassure farmers and one Republican senator about his upcoming report on how pesticides are driving up rates of childhood chronic diseases, acknowledging that chemicals like glyphosate that he has long criticized are widely used for growing crops in the U.S. "I have said repeatedly throughout this process, that we cannot take any step that will put a single farmer in this country out of business," Kennedy said at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "There's a million farmers who rely on glyphosate. 100% of corn in this country relies on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model." (Smith, 5/20)

Bloomberg: HHS Demands Drugmakers’ US Prices Match What Similar Nations Pay
The US Department of Health and Human Services is demanding that pharmaceutical companies cut drug prices to the lowest price offered to nations with economies that are similar to the US’s, the agency announced Tuesday. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened drugmakers with regulatory action if they do not lower their prices to be more in line with what other developed countries pay. As part of that announcement, the White House directed HHS to release details on what prices the administration is hoping to achieve. (Cohrs Zhang, 5/20)

Los Angeles Times: 6 Doctors On Biden's Cancer Diagnosis And His Treatment Options
Former President Biden’s weekend announcement that he has an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bone sparked the usual sympathy from supporters — and sharp suspicions among detractors. The announcement comes amid fresh reporting on Biden and his inner circle hiding the degree to which his mental acuity was slipping during his presidency and campaign for reelection last year, and the advanced stage of his cancer drew immediate accusations from the right that the former president was also hiding problems with his physical health. (Rector and Mehta, 5/20)

The Washington Post: Biden’s Last Prostate Cancer Screening Was In 2014, His Office Says 
Former president Joe Biden’s last known screening for prostate cancer was in 2014, when he was 71 years old and serving as vice president, a spokesperson for Biden’s office said on Tuesday. It is not unusual for men over 70 to stop having regular prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, the standard screening to determine risk of prostate cancer, physicians and experts say. (Bendavid and Diamond, 5/20)