Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
‘Warm’ Hotlines Deliver Help Before Mental Health Crisis Heats Up
“Warmlines” are phone lines or electronic chat options for people who are not having a full-blown mental health crisis but who could use support to stave off one. They are a growing trend in mental health outreach to supplement existing hotlines, with one successful warmline in the Bay Area recently expanding to cover all of California. (Stephanie Stephens, )
Good morning! U.S. health spending rose to $11,172 per person but actually ticked down as a share of national economy for first time in years. Read more on that below, but first here are your top California health stories for the day.
Supreme Court’s Question Of The Day: Does The Constitution Give Homeless The Right To Sleep On Sidewalks? The Supreme Court meets Friday to consider for the first time whether the Constitution gives homeless people a right to sleep on the sidewalk. The justices are weighing an appeal of a much-disputed ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that held last year that it was cruel and unusual punishment to enforce criminal laws against homeless people who are living on the street if a city doesn’t offer enough shelters as an alternative. Judge Marsha Berzon described the ruling as narrow—so long as there no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors on public property. The dissenters — and officials in California and the other eight western states covered by the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction— said the ruling shackles the hands of public officials trying to redress the serious societal concern of homelessness. Read more from David Savage of the Los Angeles Times.
Homeless Crisis Is So Bad That Aggressive Policies That Would Have Died In Liberal California Years Ago Are Gaining Traction: Homelessness has skyrocketed in the past two years — by 47 percent in Oakland, 42 percent in San Jose and 17 percent in San Francisco. State legislators, cities and counties are seeking new fixes. Legislation that would have had no chance five or 10 years ago can pass,” said Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco. That means voluntary is giving way to involuntary approaches. A new state law authored by Wiener makes it easier for three counties to “conserve” — or take guardianship over — homeless people with several mental illness or substance use disorders who bounce in and out of short-term psychiatric commitments. California voters could weigh in next year on a proposed ballot measure that would sentence homeless offenders to treatment instead of jail time. Read more from Victoria Colliver of Politico.
More coverage on the homeless crisis:
Sacramento Bee: Gavin Newsom’s 100-Day Homeless Challenge Will Give Cities A Chance At More Housing Money
The San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland Proposes Crackdown On Homeless Campers In Parks And On Sidewalks
The San Francisco Chronicle: Marin Makes Progress In Permanent Housing For Homeless, But Shelters Come Up Short
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
KPBS:
Report: Blacks Twice As Likely As Whites To Be Stopped By Police In San Diego
A new report commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union has found that black people in San Diego are being stopped and searched by police at a far higher rate than white people.The group Campaign Zero, looks at policing data to recommend policies that could help end discriminatory policing. It found that the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department stopped blacks at a rate of more than two times higher than white people and were more likely to search, arrest, and use force against black people during a stop. (River-Nadler, 12/5)
Modesto Bee:
Measles Outbreak Continues. Did Anti-Vaxxers Contribute?
In 2018, worldwide measles killed 140,000 people, mostly children younger than 5, according to a new report from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention on behalf of the Measles & Rubella Initiative. This includes 72 cases in California, according to the California Department of Public Health. The last large outbreak in the state involved 131 Californians and occurred from 2014-2015 and was associated with Disneyland. (Mink, 12/5)
KPBS:
Time-Restricted Eating Could Lead To Weight Loss, Scientists Find
The holiday season is all about family and food, which might have you concerned about your waistline. Scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla have uncovered a science-backed strategy that could help some people keep the pounds off.And this strategy has to do with biological clocks, says Salk chronobiologist Emily Manoogian. (Chatlani, 12/5)
The California Health Report:
Power Blackouts Spark Medical, Financial Emergencies For California’s Most Vulnerable
A state auditor’s report released this week found that California is unprepared to protect its most vulnerable residents during natural disasters, including those who have disabilities or are medically fragile. That’s despite the fact that a quarter of the state’s population lives in an area at risk of wildfire, and 20 percent of Californians are either over the age of 65 or have a disability. The auditor reviewed emergency procedures in three counties at elevated risk for wildfires: Butte, Sonoma and Ventura. None of the counties had adequate plans for alerting, evacuating and sheltering residents during an emergency, particularly people with disabilities. Additionally, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services failed to support counties in coming up with strategies to help these vulnerable people when a natural disaster strikes, the auditor found. (Boyd-Barrett, 12/5)
Sacramento Bee:
Nurses At Grass Valley’s Hospital To Protest Staff Reductions
Registered nurses at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley will be doing informational picketing outside the facility Dec. 13 to alert community residents to staffing changes that are making it hard for them to provide timely patient care. (Anderson, 12/5)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Novato Child Dies From E. Coli Infection
A child in Novato has died from complications of E. coli infection, Marin County public health officials said Thursday. The case does not appear to be related to an ongoing national E. coli outbreak involving romaine lettuce from Salinas, said Marin County public health officer Matthew Willis. That outbreak has sickened more than 100 people in 23 states, and no deaths have been reported. (Allday, 12/5)
ProPublica:
Inside The Cell Where A Sick 16-Year-Old Boy Died In Border Patrol Care
Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, was seriously ill when immigration agents put him in a small South Texas holding cell with another sick boy on the afternoon of May 19. A few hours earlier, a nurse practitioner at the Border Patrol’s dangerously overcrowded processing center in McAllen had diagnosed him with the flu and measured his fever at 103 degrees. She said that he should be checked again in two hours and taken to the emergency room if his condition worsened. None of that happened. Worried that Carlos might infect other migrants in the teeming McAllen facility, officials moved him to a cell for quarantine at a Border Patrol station in nearby Weslaco. By the next morning, he was dead. (Moore, Schmidt, and Jameel, 12/5)
Politico:
Appeals Court Lifts Some Rulings Blocking Trump ‘Public Charge’ Rule For Immigrants
A divided federal appeals court has lifted several injunctions blocking the Trump administration from implementing a rule aimed at limiting immigration benefits for individuals who participate in government programs such as food stamps or Medicaid. In an order Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 2-1, to stay preliminary injunctions issued by federal judges in Oakland, Calif., and Spokane, Wash., against the newly issued “public charge” policy just before it was to take effect in October. (Gerstein, 12/5)
The Washington Post:
Pregnant Immigration Detainees Spiked 52 Percent Under Trump Administration
U.S. officials jailed approximately 2,100 pregnant women for immigration violations in 2018, including hundreds who were held for weeks or longer, bringing the increase since President Trump took office to 52 percent, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. The spike in pregnant detainees came after federal officials terminated an Obama administration order to release most expectant mothers because of health concerns. (Sacchetti, 12/5)
The New York Times:
Health Spending Grew Modestly, New Analysis Finds
The burdensome costs of medical care, prescription drugs and health insurance have become dominant issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. But a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows the nation remains in a period of relatively slow growth in health spending. Health spending in the United States rose by 4.6 percent to $3.6 trillion in 2018 — accounting for 17.7 percent of the economy — compared to a growth rate of 4.2 percent in 2017. Federal officials said the slight acceleration was largely the result of reinstating a tax on health insurers that the Affordable Care Act imposed but Congress had suspended for a year in 2017. Faster growth in medical prices and prescription drug spending were also factors, they said, but comparatively minor. (Goodnough and Sanger-Katz, 12/5)
The Associated Press:
US Report: Prescription Drug Prices Down Slightly Last Year
Prices for prescription drugs edged down by 1% last year, a rare result driven by declines for generics and slow, low growth in the cost of brand-name medications, the government said Thursday. Though modest, it was the first such price drop in 45 years, according to nonpartisan economic experts at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, who deliver an annual report on the nation's health care spending. (12/5)
The Associated Press:
Pelosi Sets Medicare Showdown On Drug Costs And New Benefits
The House will hold a showdown vote next week on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices, expanded Thursday to provide seniors with dental, vision and hearing benefits not currently covered. Leading Democratic committee chairmen said the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that Pelosi's bill would save the government $500 billion over 10 years, which they pledged to use for new Medicare benefits and other health care priorities such as the National Institutes of Health and the opioid crisis. (12/5)
The Associated Press:
Bloomberg Gun Plan: Permits, Assault Weapon Ban, Age Limits
Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg unveiled a gun control policy on Thursday just steps from the site of one of Colorado's worst mass shootings, calling for a ban on all assault weapons, mandatory permits for gun purchasers and a new position in the White House to coordinate gun violence prevention. “I’ve been all in on the fight against gun violence for 15 years, and I’m just getting started,” Bloomberg declared. “As president, I will work to end the gun violence epidemic once and for all." (12/5)
The New York Times:
Trump’s Rollback Of Transgender Rights Extends Through Entire Government
Nicolas Talbott, a graduate student at Kent State University in Ohio who is transgender, was told in May that because of President Trump’s transgender ban in the military, he would no longer be eligible for placement as an Army officer. He could continue participating in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program, but the benefits that he joined for — health insurance and student loan forgiveness — were no longer available to him. “Everyone else would walk away with a job in the United States Army, and I would walk away with just more student loan debt,” Mr. Talbott said. (Fadulu, 12/6)
The New York Times:
Nearly A Third Of Teens Use One Or More Tobacco Products
Nearly one in three high school students has reported using a tobacco product recently, according to a new federal survey released on Thursday, evidence that concerns over nicotine addiction among teenagers are not limited to e-cigarettes. “The data released today on youth tobacco product use are deeply troubling and indicate that past progress in reducing youth use of these products has been erased,” said Brian King, the deputy director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “These troubling rates of use are being driven by e-cigarettes, which have no redeeming aspects among youth.” (Hoffman and Kaplan, 12/5)
The Washington Post:
Hundreds Of Lawyers Tell The Supreme Court About Their Own Abortion Stories
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a new landmark abortion case, hundreds of lawyers and legal professionals who have had the procedure filed an amicus brief Monday in support of overturning a restrictive Louisiana law. The 368 signers — now partners at top-10 law firms, counsel to Fortune 100 companies, public defenders, prosecutors, retired judges, award-winning professors and current law students — “speak for many more of the past, present, and future members of the legal profession who have, like one in four American women, terminated a pregnancy in their lifetimes,” the filing stated. (Paul, 12/5)
Politico:
Trump Pulled Into Feud Between Top Health Officials
President Donald Trump has personally tried to settle the long-running feud between his two top health appointees, telling his health secretary to fix the relationship with his Medicare chief, said three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Trump and Seema Verma, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, privately met in mid-November amid escalating tensions between her and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. Around the same time, Trump instructed Azar to smooth things over. Those conversations came shortly before POLITICO first reported on the souring relationship between Azar and Verma, whose agency sits within HHS. (Diamond, Pradhan and Cancryn, 12/5)
The Washington Post:
Gilead Delayed Safer HIV Drug To Extend Monopoly Profits, Advocates Allege
In 2005, Gilead Sciences notified federal regulators that it was suspending development of a potentially safer, more potent HIV-fighting drug than the one on the market. The company did not restart its Food and Drug Administration application until 2010. Now the five-year delay of a promising drug is at the core of accusations by advocates that Gilead improperly exploited the patent system at the expense of patient health. (Rowland, 12/5)
The New York Times:
Government Studying Widely Used Chemicals Linked To Health Issues
Two decades after concern emerged about a class of chemicals used in everything from Teflon pans to firefighting foam, the federal government has started the first in a series of detailed studies of the impact the chemicals have had on human health. The goal is to determine what role the chemicals, known generally as PFAS, play in a long list of health conditions including thyroid, kidney, liver, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, among other ailments. (Lipton, 12/5)
The Wall Street Journal:
For Many Soldiers, Mental-Health Issues Start Before Enlistment
Combat experience is often blamed as the root cause of suicidal behavior among veterans. But ongoing Army studies show that many troops with mental-health problems can trace them back to trauma experienced before they joined the military. “There is a significant and growing proportion of soldiers who enter the military with psychiatric disorders, increasing the risk over time for suicide behaviors within the Army,” according to a paper released earlier this year from University of Washington researchers that used data from Army-funded studies. (Kesling, 12/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Trump's Idea To Import Prescription Drugs From Canada Won't Work
President Trump recently reiterated the pledge he made before taking office — that he’d work tirelessly to lower prices of prescription drugs. “Hard-working Americans don’t deserve to pay such high prices for the drugs they need,” Trump tweeted the other day. “We are fighting DAILY to make sure this HAPPENS.” His solution, he said, is for Americans to import drugs from Canada “that are MUCH CHEAPER than what we have now.” (David Lazarus, 12/2)
Los Angeles Times:
My Wife's Life Is Priceless, But Her Chemo Is Too Expensive
Doctors told my wife there was “very little chance” her breast cancer would return. But five years later, three months after Paula’s 51st birthday, I typed “prognosis of metastatic breast cancer” into my browser and through tears read the search results: “dismal prognosis,” “incurable,” “median survival of three years.” Paula’s doctors urged us not to despair — there were great new medicines available they hoped could slow down the tumor. And now, three years later, her cancer has not progressed. As a husband, I’m obviously ecstatic. (Peter Ubel, 12/6)
Sacramento Bee:
How The Sacramento CA Mayor Hopes To Solve Homelessness
Could smaller, more innovative and efficient types of housing be an answer to Sacramento’s housing crisis? Mayor Darrell Steinberg thinks so. Steinberg wants to fund what he calls “efficiency housing,” meaning non-traditional housing that is quicker and cheaper to construct. A draft proposal lists examples of efficiency housing types as “attached microunits, tiny homes, Accessory Dwelling Units, premanufactured homes, modular construction housing units, container unit housing, 3-D printed housing units, and shared facilities such as rooming houses.” (12/2)
Los Angeles Times:
Addicted Mothers Like Chelsea Becker A Break, Not Prison
I had conflicting reactions to the story of Chelsea Becker, the 25-year-old Hanford, Calif., meth addict who delivered a stillborn baby boy in September: revulsion, sadness, pity, sympathy. An autopsy showed that the baby, Zachariah, had what prosecutors allege were “toxic levels” of methamphetamine in his system. Becker is now in jail on suspicion of murdering him. My colleague Alexandra Wigglesworth, who reported the story, visited Becker in jail, where she’s being held in lieu of $5 million bail. (Robin Abcarian, 12/3)
Sacramento Bee:
Influencers Weigh In On CA Economic, Job Priorities In 2020
California Influencers this week answered the following question: What should the most important priority in the area of economic policy and job creation be for Governor Newsom and the State Legislature in 2020? Below are the Influencers’ answers in their entirety. (Dan Schnur, 12/1)
San Jose Mercury News:
California's Gray Zone Between Good Intentions, Reality
California voters have righteously demanded major transitions that move people out of the darkness of illegal drug sales, sleeping on the street and lives stalled by criminal records — and into the light of legal cannabis businesses, permanent housing and second chances for ex-cons. (Joe Mathews, 12/6)