Stat: What Does The Golden State Killer Arrest Mean For Genetic Privacy?
The identity of one of California’s most notorious serial killers had been a mystery for decades — until this week, when law enforcement arrested a suspect. Investigators revealed on Thursday that they made the breakthrough using a remarkable tool: a commercial genealogy website. The unusual manner in which the Golden State Killer case was cracked has sparked wonderment — as well as privacy concerns about how law enforcement can and does use the genetic information that consumers give up to genetic testing companies. That’s because companies generally say on their websites that a customer’s genetic information can be shared with law enforcement if demanded with a warrant. (Robbins, 4/26)

Sacramento Bee: East Area Rapist: Questions About Use Of DNA From Genealogy Sites
Millions of Americans are doing it – packing up samples of their saliva and mailing it off to an online genealogy company to analyze their DNA and help trace their family tree. Without knowing it, they may be helping law enforcement crack difficult cases. (Kasler and Chabria, 4/26)

The Associated Press: A Look At DNA Testing That ID’d A Suspected Serial Killer
Joseph James DeAngelo, who authorities suspect is the so-called Golden State Killer responsible for at least a dozen murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and 80s, was arrested more than three decades after the last killing with the help of information from an online genealogical site. Investigators haven’t disclosed many key elements about how and why they took this very unusual step to find a suspect. Here’s a look at the case and some of the questions surrounding it. (Balsamo, 4/27)

The New York Times: Do Serial Killers Just Stop? Yes, Sometimes
The Golden State Killer’s barrage of rapes and murders began in a gold mining area east of Sacramento in 1976. By 1986, it seemed to have stopped.Why? With the arrest Tuesday of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who has been charged so far with eight counts of murder, more than 30 years had passed since the last episode in the series. That long period of quiescence seems to fly in the face of the popular belief that serial rapists and killers are incapable of stopping. (Hoffman, 4/26)

Los Angeles Times: Here's Why The Apparent Increase In Autism Spectrum Disorders May Be Good For U.S. Children
The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among American children continues to rise, new government data suggest. And that may be a good thing. Among 11 sites across the U.S. where records of 8-year-olds are scrutinized in detail, 1 in 59 kids was deemed to have ASD in 2014. That's up from 1 in 68 in 2012. Normally, health officials would prefer to see less of a disease, not more of it. But in this case, the higher number is probably a sign that more children of color who are on the autism spectrum are being recognized as such and getting services to help them, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data come from the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. ADDM researchers pore over medical reports from pediatric clinics, neurologists, child psychologists, speech pathologists and physical therapists, as well as records of special education services provided through public schools. (Kaplan, 4/26)

inewsource: Montana Couple Sinks Life Savings Into 'Miracle' Diabetes Treatment
Ron Briggs used to call himself a “good cash cow for the medical industry.” That’s because every few weeks, an ambulance would rush across the rugged, cowboy town of Dillon, Montana, sirens blaring, to revive him from a diabetic coma. The nation has a limited supply of healthcare dollars to spend on drugs and services, which is why the government and health plans require scientific evidence of patient benefit. This is especially important for the 30.3 million people in the U.S. with diabetes, whose medical costs in 2012 totaled $245 billion.He and his wife, Julie, a strong and mothering woman where Ron is concerned, gets choked up when they talk about those days, some four years ago. Those days before they found their “miracle” for treating his disease — the same miracle that would be at the heart of a criminal indictment, embroil them in a lawsuit and lead to their financial ruin. (Clark, 4/26)

KPCC: The VA Plans To Move A PTSD Clinic In West LA. These Veterans Say, 'No Way' 
As a young man, Michael Folonis witnessed some of the darkest parts of war. ... But lately, he's worried: the VA has informed the PTSD clinic it will be moving from its longtime home to a new building on the other side of the 388-acre campus.That’s because the Los Angeles VA, where Folonis attends group and individual therapy sessions, is in the process of overhauling its huge plot of land in West L.A. between Brentwood and Westwood. (Denkmann, 4/26)

Los Angeles Times: Santa Ana To Sue The Other 33 Orange County Cities Over Homelessness Burden
Santa Ana officials moved Wednesday to take legal action against all 33 other Orange County cities, stepping up pressure on their leaders to help resolve homelessness across O.C. The City Council's unanimous vote may clear the way for a federal judge to follow through on his threat to ban enforcement of anti-camping ordinances in the county, if elected officials — especially those in South Orange County — don't start doing their part to provide temporary housing for a swelling homeless population. (Do, 4/26)

In other news from across the state —

East Bay Times: Grand Jury Says Los Medanos Healthcare District Should Dissolve
A Contra Costa Grand Jury has recommended that the Los Medanos Community Healthcare District be dissolved, considering it no longer runs a community hospital, spends more money administering grants than on the grants themselves and does not track the effectiveness of its programs. The report, which was issued on April 19, details what it sees as the fiscal mismanagement, duplication of services, and a lack of transparency. The district’s 2017-2018 budget anticipates bringing in $1 million in property taxes and spending half of that — $510,000 — on administrative overhead and $412,000 on the grants themselves. In the past six budgets, four have allocated more money for administering grants than on the grants themselves. (Davis, 4/26)

Modesto Bee: Modesto Doc Faces Federal Charges Of Illegally Prescribing Opioids
On April 19, a federal grand jury delivered a 22-count indictment against Sawtantra Kumar Chopra, who has an office on Spanos Court and whose business card says he practices internal medicine and treats pulmonary diseases. Between March 2017 and March 2018, the indictment alleges, Chopra on multiple occasions sold for cash prescriptions for large quantities of highly addictive opioids, including Norco (hydrocodone) and Xanax (alprazolam). (Farrow, 4/26)

Politico: ‘Veterans Are Losing 6 Different Ways Right Now’
The implosion of Ronny Jackson’s nomination to lead the Veterans Affairs Department may look like the Trump administration’s drama of the moment, but it carries big consequences for 9 million veterans in a sprawling health care system with uneven results and a precarious future. Not only does the VA have no leader, the veteran health care community is divided between conservatives inclined to privatize much of veterans’ care and those who want to invest more in fixing the current system. The impact can be seen across 170 medical centers and hundreds of clinics of varying quality that treat veterans who served in the U.S. military in every conflict since World War II. (Allen, 4/26)

Modern Healthcare: VA Choice Reforms Face Tight Timeline As Focus Turns To Trump's Next Nominee For Secretary 
Amid the noise over Dr. Ronny Jackson withdrawing from consideration for secretary of Veterans Affairs, key lawmakers and stakeholders vow the long-stalled VA Choice reforms will move forward as planned even as the timeline grows shorter and the focus has shifted to finding the next nominee. The House VA Committee this week was supposed to debate the bipartisan agreement reached last month, but that has been postponed until early May, and not all parts of the deal are set in stone, according to aides close to talks. (Luthi, 4/26)

The New York Times: For Many, Life In Trump’s Orbit Ends In A Crash Landing
Another day, another casualty. Or two. By the time the sun set Thursday, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson was a failed cabinet nominee whose life had been picked apart for public consumption, and Michael D. Cohen was back in court facing possible criminal prosecution. A ride on President Trump’s bullet train can be thrilling, but it is often a brutal journey that leaves some bloodied by the side of the tracks. In only 15 months in office, Mr. Trump has burned through a record number of advisers and associates who have found themselves in legal, professional or personal trouble, or even all three. (Baker and Haberman, 4/26)

The Washington Post: Ronny Jackson Withdraws As Trump’s Nominee To Lead Veterans Affairs, But He Remains Under Scrutiny
Ronny L. Jackson’s withdrawal from consideration to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs stanched an immediate political crisis for the Trump White House, but it sparked new questions over his future as the president’s doctor and the fate of the embattled agency. Jackson announced Thursday morning that he was pulling out of the nomination process amid a mushrooming cloud of allegations over professional misconduct, leaving in limbo a sprawling federal bureaucracy serving 9 million military veterans that President Trump has called a top domestic priority. Yet even as Jackson strongly denied the charges against him, calling them “completely false and fabricated” in a defiant statement, his position as Trump’s chief physician and a pending Navy promotion looked shaky. (Rein, Lamothe and Nakamura, 4/26)

Politico: ‘Jon Poked The Bear’: Tester Braces For Trump’s Revenge
Jon Tester didn't intend to play a central role in taking down President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Veterans Affairs Department. Yet that's exactly what the Montana Democrat ended up doing. And now, Trump is coming after him. (Everett, 4/26)

USA Today: Drug Copay Assistance Keeps Patients Alive And Prices, Premiums High
Copayment assistance groups, created to help patients with the increasingly higher price of drugs to treat medical conditions, are under investigation by federal authorities for possibly skewing the cost of health care to favor drug companies. The probes, noted by several drug makers in their regulatory filings, are slowing contributions to at least two of these assistance groups, charities that sometimes pay top executives salaries of $300,000 or more. Critics of these groups, such as Patients for Affordable Drugs founder David Mitchell, say they drive up the cost of health care by masking the price of drugs and forcing higher costs on the insurance companies that pass them along to consumers and employers. (O'Donnell, Robinson, Alltucker and Freeman, 4/26)

The Washington Post: Why Drug Companies See Rare-Disease Patients As Human Jackpots
The swelling attacks come on without warning. Loukisha Olive-McCoy’s lower lip puffs up; then her cheeks and jaw twist and pull, distorting her face into an involuntary grimace. Sometimes her tongue will fill up the back of her throat and choke off her breathing. Olive-McCoy, 44, has hereditary angioedema (HAE), a life-threatening disease so rare that many doctors have only read about it. Fortunately, there are cutting-edge drugs to keep the swelling at bay and treat the attacks that break through. (Johnson, 4/25)

California Healthline: Dissecting The Rhetoric Vs. Reality Of Trump’s Tough Talk On Drug Prices
President Donald Trump has railed against the high price of prescription drugs and famously bemoaned how pharmaceutical companies are “getting away with murder.” Yet, many Americans aren’t seeing a change in what they pay out-of-pocket. Trump promised a speech on prescription drug prices, and it’s expected anytime. Here’s a look at the rhetoric thus far versus the results. (Tribble, 4/27)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: 20 States Seek To Block Obama's Health Care Law
Twenty Republican-led states are seeking to temporarily invalidate former President Barack Obama's health care law while their larger lawsuit against it proceeds. In a February suit, Texas and Wisconsin led a coalition arguing that the Affordable Care Act is no longer constitutional after the Republican-backed tax overhaul eliminated fines for not having health care coverage.Sixteen states with Democratic governors later sought to intervene. They suggested that Democratic attorneys general will have to defend the law because President Donald Trump's administration won't. (4/26)

The Wall Street Journal: The Million-Dollar Cancer Treatment: Who Will Pay?
The emergence of genetics-based medicines is pushing the cost of treating certain diseases to new levels, forcing hospitals and health insurers to reckon with how to cover total costs per patient approaching a million dollars. The therapies deliver new genes or genetically altered cells to tackle some of the hardest-to-treat diseases, including in children. They come at a high price: Novartis AG listed its newly approved cell therapy for cancer at $475,000, while Gilead Sciences Inc. priced its rival drug at $373,000. (Rockoff, 4/26)

The New York Times: E. Coli Flare-Up Is Largest Multistate Outbreak Since 2006
A recent spate of infections linked to romaine lettuce is now the largest multistate food-borne E. coli outbreak since 2006, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 84 people were infected in 19 states between mid-March and mid-April, the C.D.C. announced Wednesday, adding more than two dozen cases to its previous count. Because of the time it takes for an illness to reach the agency’s attention, illnesses contracted after April 5 may not yet have been reported, the agency said. (Chokshi, 4/26)

Sacramento Bee: Bill Won't Control Health Costs In California
Last week, a bill that would dismantle California’s health care delivery system as we know it was introduced in the Legislature. Assembly Bill 3087 would penalize millions of patients through massive cuts in services and result in as many as 175,000 hospital workers losing their jobs.The sponsors of AB 3087 – which is to be heard Tuesday by the Assembly Health Committee – falsely believe that this bill would lower health care costs by imposing a mandatory rate-setting system on doctors, hospitals, dentists and insurers. OPINIONThey claim their proposal is based on a similar system that operates in Maryland. As the former head of the Maryland Hospital Association, I know that nothing could be further from the truth. (Carmela Coyle, 4/23)

Sacramento Bee: This Bill Will Control Health Care Costs And Protect California Patients
Health care prices are just too high. Last month when Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued Sutter Health, one of California’s largest hospital chains, for anti-competitive practices and prices, he pointed to a problem not just with one provider, but to out-of-control health care pricing. We are co-sponsoring Assembly Bill 3087, the Health Care Price Relief Act, to institute new price controls and oversight to provide a fair, but not inflated, rate to doctors, hospitals and health plans – and to stop health care price-gouging. The bill, introduced by Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, is to be heard Tuesday by the Assembly Health Committee. (Anthony Wright, 4/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: A Warning On Health-Care Price Setting As Envisioned By AB3087
AB3087 proposes to task an independent state agency with setting payment rates for all health-care providers. Such authority conveys substantial power to alter the market. However, the temptation for regulators to overreach presents a threat to rate setting’s success. (Clemens and Ippolito, 4/24)

The New York Times: California, Coffee And Cancer: One Of These Doesn’t Belong
About two-thirds of smokers will die early from cigarette-based illnesses. Cigarettes are also very addictive. Because of this, it seems reasonable to place warnings on their labels. If a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has his way, California businesses will have to put similar warnings on something else that can be addictive, coffee. His ruling, which is being challenged by coffee producers, is harder to justify in terms of health — if it can be justified at all. (Aaron E. Carroll, 4/23)

Los Angeles Times: Give Paramedics The Power To Make Better Choices On Behalf Of Vulnerable People
If a person is intoxicated or suffering from a mental health crisis, a crowded hospital emergency room may not be the right place to get treatment. Yet homeless people are often taken there when they may just need a place to sober up or be seen by a mental health professional. That's because paramedics don't have the option to take homeless people — or anyone else, for that matter — to a sobering center or a behavioral health facility. Under state law, paramedics (unlike police or sheriff's deputies in L.A. County) summoned through 911 calls are legally obligated to take an individual needing treatment to a hospital emergency room. (4/24)

The Mercury News: How To Keep Intoxicated Out Of Emergency Rooms
Assembly Bill 1795, introduced by Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson, would give counties authority to allow specially trained paramedics to transport intoxicated adults directly to sobering centers when it’s determined they do not have an underlying medical issue. Sobering centers offer a safe and effective alternative. (Shannon Smith-Bernardin, 4/25)

Los Angeles Times: Conversion Therapy For Gays Is Awful, But So Is California's Bill To Ban It
That a tiny market for conversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality still exists today is deeply sad, even infuriating. But here's the question: If a competent adult knows the most devastating critiques, and wants to pay for it anyway, should California law thwart him or her? The Assembly thinks so. Assembly Bill 2943, which State Rep. Evan Low shepherded through passage last week, declares that "the potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient." (Conor Friedersdorf, 4/27)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Opioids And County Jails: A Lesson For U.S.
The failure of Congress and the Obama and Trump administrations to aggressively address the opioid epidemic is a bipartisan indictment of our political establishment. That’s not just because opioid overdoses have killed more than 250,000 people over the past decade. It’s because of the growing reasons to think other drugs could have been used much more safely for pain relief in place of habit-forming drugs like OxyContin and Percocet that have created so many American addicts. ...Now there’s more evidence from our own backyard that opioids have been grossly overprescribed. A recent report in The San Diego Union-Tribune detailed how county jail officials had cut back opioid prescriptions from nearly 1,000 in early 2013 to 23 last month after adopting best-practices standards that focused on the risk prisoners face from opioids and the effectiveness of far less potent medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen. This was done, reassuringly, with relatively few complications. (4/26)

Los Angeles Times: What Homeless Crisis? HUD Secretary Ben Carson Wants To Raise Rents On The Poorest Of The Poor
Carson unveiled the Making Affordable Housing Work Act of 2018, a proposed bill that could force the very poorest tenants receiving federal aid — those most likely on the edge of homelessness — to pay three times as much in rent. It would also shrink the rent subsidies received by other low-income Americans, leaving them with less money for food, medical expenses and education. (4/27)

Los Angeles Times: South O.C.'s Solution To Homelessness Is Class Warfare At Its NIMBYest
Last week, the mayors of 12 cities in South Orange County had the opportunity to cut the Gordian knot that is homelessness. They met at the behest of U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, who'd issued them a warning: Step up and help solve this problem, or I'm striking down the HOA-approved hedge of laws you think guard your perimeter. See, for decades cops and sheriff's deputies in South County have picked up the destitute and then dropped them off in blue-collar North County towns including Costa Mesa and Anaheim, but especially Santa Ana, which just happens to be the most Mexican city in Orange County. (Gustavo Arellano, 4/25)

Sacramento Bee: Think Twice Before Signing Petition For Local Tax Limit
If you get asked to sign a petition for a ballot initiative to limit local taxes in California, you might just want to walk away. This radical measure would require a two-thirds supermajority for any new tax, tax increase or tax extension, making it much more difficult for cities and counties to control their own financial destinies. (4/24)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Should Invest Cannabis Taxes In Stephon Clark's Neighborhood
To repair some of the damage caused by criminalization, the city should set aside the millions of dollars it expects to bring in over the coming years from marijuana taxes and invest that money in children and youth services, and in economic development in those neighborhoods most impacted by the decades-long war on drugs. It should create a public planning process on how to use those revenues to build economic health and well being in Stephon Clark’s neighborhood and in neighborhoods like it. (Malaki Seku Amen, 4/24)