San Diego Union-Tribune: These 3 Things May Affect Your Health Care Coverage
While work requirements and enrollment verification for Medicaid recipients got the most attention during the debate over President Trump’s domestic policy bill, there are other factors in play that will take effect much sooner that could cost thousands of San Diego County residents their health insurance. (Sisson, 7/21)

AP: Medicaid For Immigrants In US Illegally Being Limited Or Ended In 3 States
At least seven states and the District of Columbia have offered coverage for immigrants since mostly 2020. But three of them have done an about-face, ending or limiting coverage for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who aren’t in the U.S. legally in California, Illinois and Minnesota. (Nguyễn and Shastri, 7/19)

Politico: ICE Raids And Medicaid Cuts Are Bad News For California's Immigrants. State Cuts Could Be ‘Much Worse’
One recent morning, not long after the Trump administration launched its extraordinary immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, Alfredo Contreras pulled a large RV into the parking lot of a rehab center south of the city’s skyline. The RV is part of a small fleet of rolling exam rooms run by St. John’s Community Health that have taken on heightened importance in the city’s health care — and, increasingly, political — landscape since the start of the raids. (Bluth and Schultheis, 7/20)

The Riverside Record: Palo Verde Healthcare District Adopts Resolution Authorizing Bankruptcy Filing
The Palo Verde Healthcare District Board of Directors Wednesday adopted a resolution that would authorize Interim Chief Financial Officer Michael Rose and Chief Executive Officer Sandy Anaya to file a Chapter 9 bankruptcy petition, should it become necessary. “This is really a last resort,” Vanessa Burke, a financial consultant hired by the district, said. ... “We are looking at all options for the hospital.” The vote came less than a month after the board declared a fiscal emergency on June 25, which Rose said was the result of a “series of compounding financial crises.” (Ramirez, 7/17)

Bay Area News Group: What Led To Closure Of Alameda County's First-In-The-Nation Rape Crisis Center?
When survivors across the Bay Area arrive at hospitals and police stations for help — or choose to dial (510) 800-4247 on their own — the historic rape crisis center is missing hundreds of calls a month because “we’re just not answering the phone,” according to one of the last seven people on staff by May, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation. (Lauer, 7/20)

NBC News: Musk Brain Implant Company Neuralink Filed As Small Business
Elon Musk’s health tech company Neuralink labeled itself a “small disadvantaged business” in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration, shortly before a financing round valued the company at $9 billion. Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) system, with an initial aim to help people with severe paralysis regain some independence. BCI technology broadly can translate a person’s brain signals into commands that allow them to manipulate external technologies just by thinking. (Kolodny, 7/18)

Modern Healthcare: Joint Commission Cuts Requirements From Accreditation Standards
The Joint Commission has eliminated 714 requirements from its accreditation standards in an effort to streamline expectations and improve hospital compliance. The changes will be reflected in the nonprofit accrediting agency’s Accreditation 360 program and are set to go into effect Jan. 1. (DeSilva, 7/18)

Axios: Hospitals Scoop Up Physician Practices, Driving Prices Up
Hospitals are steadily buying small physician practices and, in the process, driving up the price of care, a new National Bureau of Economic Research study shows. It's the latest evidence of consolidation in health care that's left more than three-quarters of U.S. doctors employed by health systems or corporations. (Reed, 7/21)

The New York Times: Heath Insurers Are Denying More Drug Claims, Data Shows
Prescription drug denials by private insurers in the United States jumped 25 percent from 2016 to 2023, according to a new analysis of more than four billion claims, a practice that has contributed to rising public outrage about the nation’s private health insurance system. The report, compiled for The New York Times by the health analytics company Komodo Health, shows that denial rates rose from 18.3 percent to 22.9 percent. The rejections went up across many major health plans, including the country’s largest private insurer, UnitedHealthcare. (Kliff, 7/18)

The San Diego Union-Times: A Homeless Outreach Team Focused On Tough Cases May End After Budget Cuts
Being “homeless” can mean many things. The term encompasses families unable to make ends meet, veterans struggling to adapt to civilian life and residents wrestling with addiction. However, the most visible form of homelessness is perhaps the individual who’s constantly being arrested or calling 911. The needs may be complex — mental illness is sometimes a factor — and their regular presence in jails and hospitals can cost taxpayers vast amounts of money. Yet budget cuts in the city of San Diego threaten to reduce the number of outreach workers who are focused on those complicated cases. (Nelson, 7/20)

Los Angeles Times: A Tech Billionaire Vows To Make Homeless Housing Affordable And Profitable
A call for proposals to develop a surplus Metro property on the corner of Wilshire and Crenshaw boulevards drew bids from seven heavyweights in the world of homeless housing. Along with big non-profits like Abode, PATH and Bridge Housing, an eighth bidder — one that has yet to produce a single apartment — presented a bold plan to do what none of the others could. Better Angels, a nonprofit founded by a billionaire tech entrepreneur who has turned his attention to homelessness, said it will build 212 affordable units on the property, plus a medical office building, without needing a dime of taxpayer money. (Smith, 7/20)

Los Angeles Times: Agency Protecting California's Workers Doesn't Have Enough People To Do Its Job, Audit Says
California’s workplace safety agency doesn’t have enough people to protect the state’s workers, said a recent state audit. (Hussain, 7/18)

CalMatters: California OSHA Inspectors Don't Visit Worksites Even When Workers Are Injured
California’s worker safety agency is under-inspecting workplaces after accidents and worker injuries, failing to enforce labor regulations in a way that “may undermine” them because it does not have enough employees to do the inspections, a state audit found. (Kuang, 7/19)

The New York Times: Under Trump, A New Focus For A Birth Control Program: Helping Women Get Pregnant
The Trump administration intends to use funds from a decades-old federal program that provides birth control to low-income women to ramp up efforts to help aspiring mothers get pregnant, signaling a shift in policy that will appease both religious conservatives and adherents of its Make America Healthy Again agenda. The first sign of the change appeared on a little-noticed government website last week, in a post offering a $1.5 million grant to start an “infertility training center.” (Kitchener and Gay Stolberg, 7/18)

Roll Call: CBO Finds Health Agency Cuts Would Result In Fewer New Drugs 
The Trump administration’s proposed cuts at the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration could lower the number of new drugs that come to market in the next three decades, according to an analysis released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office. (Cohen, 7/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: This Common Health Condition Has A Surprising Link With Dementia
For years, doctors have known that high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking and excessive alcohol increase your risk of dementia. More recently, a growing body of evidence also suggests a link to vision problems, leading to the influential Lancet Commission in 2024 to add untreated vision loss to the list of 14 modifiable risk factors for dementia. The commission, which issues periodic recommendations on public health matters, found that about 45% of dementia cases in the world are potentially preventable by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors — which also include high cholesterol, social isolation and hearing loss — and that 2% of cases can be prevented or delayed by addressing treatable vision loss. (Ho, 7/20)

The Washington Post: Women Feel More Anger As They Age, But Show It Less, Study Suggests
Women feel more anger but express less of it as they age, according to a recent analysis in the journal Menopause. Researchers looked at health reports and menstrual data from 501 participants in the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study, analyzing a subset of data from 271 women to look for possible connections between age, reproductive stage and anger in women. The women who were studied were between 35 and 55 and still menstruating. (Blakemore, 7/19)

Berkeleyside: Berkeley's Pacific Center Pivots To Meet Bay Area LGBTQ+ Needs
With public and private resources drying up amid a national gender panic, a Berkeley center offering support for LGBTQ+ people is scrambling to adapt to the uncertain new terrain. The Pacific Center for Human Growth offers mental health services, safe spaces and community for people in Alameda County and beyond. The organization ducked a blow recently when a provision banning the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care was stripped from President Trump’s sweeping tax and policy bill. (Arredondo, 7/21)

CIDRAP: Flies, ‘Milk Snatching’ Among H5N1 Transmission Contributors In Dairy Cattle
Though H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in dairy cattle and commercial poultry are at low levels in the United States, scientists continue to sort out how the virus spreads on farms, and two new pieces of information this week shed more light on potential spread in dairy cattle: contamination from house flies and “milk snatching”. Over the last 30 days, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported only one detection in poultry, a game bird farm in Pennsylvania, and two detections in dairy cattle, which involved herds from California and Arizona. (Schnirring, 7/18)

NPR: Protein Powders Might Be In Your Teen's Social Media Feed. Here's What To Know
Emiliano Slesaransky, 17, joined Santa Monica High School's football team as a freshman and — at the urging of coaches and teammates— started hitting the gym whenever possible: in the morning, after school, and on the weekends. The people he met there would share their strategies for bulking up. "They would take protein powders, other supplements like some people I know take ashwagandha, and maybe creatine," he says, citing popular energy and exercise-enhancing supplements. Emiliano started taking some of them, too. (Noguchi, 7/21)

CNN: Smartphones Aren’t Safe For Kids Under 13. Here’s Why
Parents should avoid preteens’ use of smartphones and social media, according to new research. A study released Monday found that using smartphones before age 13 could damage kids’ mental health. (Alaimo, 7/20)