Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Medi-Cal Benefits Eliminated A Decade Ago, Such As Foot Care And Eyeglasses, Are Back
Budget cuts in 2009, sparked by the Great Recession, eliminated many needed health care services, like regular foot care for people with diabetes to minimize the risk of amputation. The restored benefits also include eyeglasses, speech therapy and hearing exams. (John M. Glionna, )
Good morning! Here are some of your top California health stories for the day.
Trump Administration Expected To Announce Action Against California’s Requirement That Insurers Cover Abortion: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration is planning on Friday to announce action against California over its requirement insurers cover abortions, according to two sources familiar with the planning. The administration is expected to say that California’s requirement violates a federal law banning government entities that get federal money from discriminating against health care organizations because they don’t provide abortion or abortion coverage, the two people said. HHS’ Office for Civil Rights has said states could be stripped of federal funding if they violate amendments that protect abortion opponents. Read more from Stephanie Armour.
California Hit Hard By EPA’s Looser Rules That Affect Drinking Water For Millions Of Americans: The EPA’s new water regulations are expected to hit California and other Western states especially hard because data suggest 81% of streams in the Southwest would lose long-held protections, including tributaries to major waterways that millions of people rely on for drinking water. In California, 2 out of 3 of the state’s freshwater streams could lose federal protection. Yet the state is better positioned than others to weather the changes. Waters that lose protection under the Trump rule will still be covered under California law. And state regulators have strengthened protections for wetlands and streams in anticipation of the federal rollback. Read more from Anna M. Phillips of the Los Angeles Times.
Covered California Reports Number Of New Enrollees Blows By Last Year’s Totals: Covered California reported Thursday that the number of new enrollees has surged to 318,000. “Thousands are signing up every day, and we’re not done yet,” said Peter V. Lee, Covered California executive director. “Californians have until midnight on January 31 to sign up and not only avoid paying a penalty to the Franchise Tax Board but – for almost a million Californians – get new help from the state to lower their health care costs.” Read more from Cathie Anderson of the Sacramento Bee.
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
The New York Times:
Coronavirus Is Spreading, But W.H.O. Says It’s Not A Global Emergency
The World Health Organization on Thursday decided not to declare the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak a global emergency, despite the spread of the dangerous respiratory infection from China to at least five other countries. Although the disease has reached beyond China, the number of cases in other countries is still relatively small, and the disease does not seem to be spreading within those countries, agency officials said. Of more than 800 cases now reported, the wide majority — and all the 25 deaths — have been in China, according to Chinese officials. (Grady, 1/24)
Los Angeles Times:
Everything You Need To Know As The China Coronavirus Spreads
A traveler who arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Mexico City was taken to a hospital early Thursday for an evaluation. The unidentified passenger arrived on American Airlines Flight 2546 shortly before 6:40 p.m. Wednesday and was screened by CDC officers at LAX. Based on their recommendation, an ambulance was called shortly after midnight to take the person to a hospital, said Heath Montgomery, an LAX spokesman. Health officials expect to find more patients with the virus. “We do expect additional cases in the U.S. and globally,” Messonnier said. (Baumgaertner, Karlamangla and Fry, 1/23)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Wuhan Coronavirus: Here’s What We Know
CDC and county health departments are urging people who have recently traveled to Wuhan, China, or who have been in close quarters with someone who has traveled there to contact the county health department or their physicians if they have a respiratory illness (fever, lower respiratory symptoms such as a cough or shortness of breath). Doctors are being asked to alert their county health departments if they come across a suspected case, to isolate the patient and to have hospital and health workers take precautions around the patient. In the San Francisco Department of Public Health, healthcare provders are advised to screen for travel history on all patients with potentially infectious diseases, especially those with fever and respiratory illness. (Hernandez, 1/23)
Los Angeles Times:
Hate Crimes In Los Angeles Reach Highest Level Since 2002, Data Show
Reports of hate crimes rose in Los Angeles for the fifth straight year in 2019, increasing 10.3% over the year before and reaching their highest level since 2002, according to data released Wednesday. A total of 322 hate crimes were reported last year, compared with 292 in 2018, according to numbers from the Los Angeles Police Department that were disclosed at an L.A. City Council Public Safety Committee meeting. (Wigglesworth, 1/23)
LAist:
An Increase In Hate Crimes Has Disproportionately Affected LA's Black And Jewish Communities
Los Angeles saw an increase in hate crimes between 2018 and 2019, with the black and Jewish communities affected at the highest rates. According to data released by the Los Angeles Police Department Wednesday, 68 crimes against black people or institutions were committed in 2019 - up from 61 in 2018 and representing an 11.5% increase. Crimes committed against Jewish people or institutions saw an increase of 60%, rising from 43 to 69. (Ogilvie, 1/23)
Los Angeles Times:
L.A. Mayor Garcetti Foresees Progress On Homelessness Via Talks With HUD Secretary Ben Carson
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that he hopes to reach a preliminary agreement with the Trump administration on a joint plan to help combat the city’s swelling homelessness crisis when he meets with Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson on Friday. Garcetti said a final deal was still days or weeks away but expressed optimism that the two sides were making progress toward an agreement to provide federal resources, including land, to augment local efforts to erect more shelter space for people living on the streets. (Bierman and Oreskes, 1/23)
Modesto Bee:
Stanislaus Homeless Survey Seeks Insights On Causes
Packing questionnaires and comfort kits, nearly 300 people canvassed Stanislaus County on Thursday to conduct the annual point-in-time count of the homeless. The trained survey takers were a mix of resident volunteers and employees of the county, its cities and various nonprofits. (Farrow, 1/23)
Sacramento Bee:
California Agencies Struggle With Black Market Marijuana
California voters made marijuana legal to purchase and consume, but that hasn’t stopped state and local law enforcement from seizing tons of it from black market growers and retailers. By the end of 2019, agents at the California Bureau of Cannabis Control alone had seized nearly 24 tons of illicit cannabis, valued at nearly $133 million. (Sheeler, 1/24)
Sacramento Bee:
Car Safety Group Wants Added Restrictions On CA Teen Drivers
California highway safety laws are among the nation’s best at protecting people — but its laws governing teenage drivers need some toughening. That’s the finding of Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, a nonpartisan watchdog group that studies the effectiveness of laws aimed at curbing distracted driving, encouraging and enforcing seat belt use and closely monitoring and restricting teen drivers. (Lightman, 1/24)
CalMatters:
Make Up School Time Lost To Climate Disasters, Fire Country Lawmaker Says
As climate-fueled natural disasters and power shutoffs have eroded the school year in an unprecedented swath of California, a lawmaker in wildfire country is proposing making up the lost instructional time for the most severely impacted students by funding “disaster relief” summer schools. Formally dubbed the “Disaster Relief Instructional Recovery Program,” Senate Bill 884 by Democratic Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa would give schools the funding to make up instructional days lost to fires, natural disasters and attendant blackouts. (Cano, 1/23)
Sacramento Bee:
CommonSpirit Health Co-CEO Kevin Lofton Will Retire In June
The parent company of Dignity Health, CommonSpirit Health, announced this week that one of its co-chief executive officers will retire from the health care system June 30. Kevin E. Lofton was the CEO at Catholic Health Initiatives when the Denver-based company announced a merger with Dignity in 2017. The two companies officially merged in February 2019. This summer, Lofton will leave the reins of CommonSpirit to his co-CEO, Lloyd Dean, who was the longtime CEO of Dignity prior to the merger. (Anderson, 1/24)
LAist:
With No Running Water, Kaiser's Woodland Hills Medical Center Shuts Down — For Now
Kaiser Permanente's Woodland Hills Medical Center has temporarily shut down after a main water line break left the hospital without running water on Sunday. ...Company officials had announced Monday that all primary care and surgery appointments would be cancelled for the time being. (Garrova, 1/22)
The New York Times:
Trump Tries To Walk Back Entitlement Comments As Democrats Pounce
When President Trump suggested to an interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that he would, “at some point,” look at cutting entitlement programs, his Democratic critics seized on the comments as evidence that Mr. Trump would gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in a second term. “Even as the impeachment trial is underway, Trump is still talking about cutting your Social Security,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said at the beginning of a news conference that was ostensibly about the Senate impeachment trial. (Haberman and Rappeport, 1/23)
Politico:
Trump Administration Finalizing Medicaid Block Grant Plan Targeting Obamacare
The Trump administration is finalizing a plan to let states convert a chunk of Medicaid funding to block grants, even as officials remain divided over how to sell the controversial change to the safety net health program. CMS Administrator Seema Verma plans to issue a letter soon explaining how states could seek waivers to receive defined payments for adults covered by Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, according to seven people with knowledge of the closely guarded effort. An announcement is tentatively slated for the end of next week, more than one year after Verma and her team began developing the plan. (Diamond, 1/23)
The Washington Post:
Scientists Leave Federal Jobs Under President Trump
Dozens of government computers sit in a nondescript building here, able to connect to a data model that could help farmers manage the impact of a changing climate on their crops. But no one in this federal agency would know how to access the model, or, if they did, what to do with the data. That’s because the ambitious federal researcher who created it in Washington quit rather than move when the Agriculture Department relocated his agency to an office park here last fall. (Gowen, Eilperin, Guarino and Tran, 1/23)
Stat:
How Contentious Is Drug Pricing In Washington? Check The Receipts
Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and the 31 other major drug makers that belong to the trade group PhRMA together spent more than $120 million lobbying Congress in 2019, according to recently released federal disclosures. That helped pay for an army of over 450 lobbyists who helped the drug makers and their trade group vehemently oppose the sweeping proposals lawmakers and the Trump administration put forth in their efforts to lower prescription drug prices. PhRMA also broke its all-time annual lobbying record this year. It spent $28.9 million in 2019, surpassing its previous record of $27.5 million, set last year. (Florko, 1/23)
The New York Times:
Insys Founder Gets 5½ Years In Prison In Opioid Kickback Scheme
A federal judge sentenced John Kapoor, the founder of the opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics, to five and a half years in prison Thursday for his role in a racketeering scheme that bribed doctors to prescribe a highly addictive opioid and misled insurers. The case had been closely watched because it represented a rare criminal inquiry into the practices of a drug company that aggressively sold painkillers while the nation was in the grip of a deadly opioid epidemic that killed thousands of people in the last decade. (Thomas, 1/23)
The New York Times:
Surgeon General Says ‘Shocking’ Portion Of People Aren’t Told To Stop Smoking
The United States surgeon general warned on Thursday that despite the well-known lethal dangers of cigarettes, too many smokers are not routinely advised by their doctors to quit. In a new report, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, urged smokers to use a range of cessation methods that have been proven effective — and cautioned that e-cigarettes have not. “Forty percent of smokers don’t get advised to quit,” Dr. Adams said in an interview. “That was a shocking statistic to me, and it’s a little embarrassing as a health professional.” (Kaplan, 1/23)
Sacramento Bee:
SB 50 Will Create More Housing And Affordability In CA
I grew up in public housing in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, where I was raised by my grandmother. Violence was never far away, poverty was all around us and the odds were never in my favor that I would be the first person in my family to go to college, let alone one day become the Mayor of San Francisco. Earlier this month, when I was sworn in for my first full term as mayor, I looked into the crowd and saw friends, family and people from my community who helped raise me. I was so proud to see them, but I was also saddened. The truth is the majority of them no longer live in San Francisco, or even in California. Those who remain are barely hanging on. (San Francisco Mayor London Breed, 1/23)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Needs A Navigation Center For Young Adults
Every great city can be measured by the degree to which it uplifts and safeguards the young people who call it home. Each night, more than 1,100 young people experiencing homelessness find themselves on the streets of San Francisco without somewhere safe, stable and secure to sleep. Tomorrow must be different — our future depends on it. Since 1984, Larkin Street Youth Services has provided shelter to more than 75,000 young people, offering housing, education, employment and wellness supports to facilitate a successful exit out of homelessness. We have made it our mission to eradicate youth homelessness in San Francisco, and we are proud of the progress that has been made thus far. (Sherilyn Adams, 1/23)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
SF Says No Thanks To Free Housing For Homeless On Vacant Tenderloin Lot
At the corner of Turk and Jones streets in the Tenderloin sits a tiny, underused, filthy parking lot. On a recent afternoon, a man missing half his left leg used his right foot to propel his wheelchair around the space, wielding a little red broom and dustpan to tidy it up. The owner of this derelict property? The city of San Francisco.City officials asked for proposals four months ago to enliven the space as they prepare for construction of affordable housing there. The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. has been chosen to build 71 affordable studios over nine stories. But in the molasses-like world of building anything in San Francisco, it’ll take two years just to break ground. (Heather Knight, 1/24)
CalMatters:
California Legislators Should Take A Breath On Housing ‘Crisis.’ Looking At You, Scott Wiener
Sen. Scott Wiener’s controversial Senate Bill 50 is huffing and puffing its way back to the 2020 California legislative session. It aims to blow down formerly protected constitutional authority for cities to tackle their own planning and zoning. Wiener’s march to Sacramento is with a choir of politicians who sing an off-key song of crisis. The tune goes like this: “We have an affordable housing crisis. Cities are to blame. We have to do something. We’ll replace local control with top-down rezoning in the form of unfunded mandates dictated by developers and real estate investors.” (Susan Kirsch, 1/23)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Newsom’s Optional Homelessness Mandate
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s homelessness task force last week urged the state to treat the problem as the intolerable social failure it is by making shelter a constitutional requirement rather than a policy option. While California mandates that education and health care be available to its residents, as the task force noted, the more than 150,000 Californians without housing have no such legal recourse. “Everything that state, county and city governments do to alleviate this crisis is voluntary,” says the latest report of the governor’s Regional Council of Homeless Advisors. (1/19)
Los Angeles Times:
Homeless Service Center In Old L.A. Hospital Just Might Happen
Sometimes the wheels grind slowly in the halls of power, but L.A. County supervisors approved a plan Tuesday afternoon to waste no time preparing a bid to buy St. Vincent Medical Center and turn it into a homeless services center. Supervisor Hilda Solis, citing the county’s growing crisis — on the same day the latest homeless count was set to begin — introduced a motion calling on the county to enter the bidding process once the hospital clears bankruptcy court proceedings. And the groundwork was already being laid by Sachi Hamai, the county’s chief executive officer. (Steve Lopez, 1/21)
The Washington Post:
Don’t Expect A Trump-California Alliance To Fix The State’s Homelessness Problem
Who thought it possible? After months of blasting California Democratic officials for their failure to address the state’s “disgusting” homelessness crisis, President Trump seems to have had a sudden change of heart. He’s now reportedly looking to cooperate with an unlikely bedfellow — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) — to strike a deal that would send federal dollars and workers to support the city’s efforts to clean up the streets. (Bill Whalen, 1/20)
Sacramento Bee:
U-Haul Wrong To Ban Nicotine Users From Becoming Employees
Smoking is awful, a creator of tragedy and a drain on America’s health. It also happens to be legal, and that’s where the line should be drawn in the sand when it comes to an employer’s ability to dictate the behaviors of its employees. U-Haul, which employs more than 30,000 people nationwide, has dipped its toe into problematic waters by announcing that starting Feb. 1 it will no longer hire people who smoke, vape, or chew tobacco – at all. (Karin Klein, 1/22)
KQED:
Big Amazon Warehouse, Big Worker Injuries
With 2,500 employees, 855,000 square feet and 10 miles of conveyor belts, Amazon's huge Fresno warehouse also has an injury rate triple the industry average. Even though the e-commerce behemoth is bringing jobs to places like Fresno, pressure to meet quotas and keep up with shipping demand is injuring workers across the country. (Mark Fiore, 1/22)
San Francisco Chronicle:
SF Struggles With Surge In Drug Overdose Deaths
San Francisco crime may be dropping in most categories, but there’s a glaring sign of trouble on the city streets. Deaths blamed on heroin and fentanyl overdoses are soaring, more than doubling from last year. That deadly surge needs the full attention of law enforcement and medical authorities. (1/23)
Los Angeles Times:
It's Way Too Soon To Declare Tylenol A Carcinogenic Killer
State regulators are contemplating adding Tylenol and other medications containing acetaminophen to the state’s ever-growing list of chemicals suspected of causing cancer, and requiring that consumers be warned of its potential risk. But hold on before you toss out your Tylenol, Theraflu, Vicodin and any number of other prescription and over-the-counter drugs that might include acetaminophen, the popular pain relieving ingredient. The fact that the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment may end up slapping the drug with a warning label doesn’t mean it’s a proven killer. (1/23)
Los Angeles Times:
California Calls Itself A 'Reproductive Freedom' State. Here's How It Can Make Good On That
Women from states where abortion access is being legislated out of reach will undoubtedly travel to California to seek safe abortion care, and our government can and should do more to help them get it. In June, California Democrats declared ours to be a “reproductive freedom” state. The Legislature and the governor must take action to make that statement a reality. (Daniel Grossman, 1/24)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
The AI Regulation Wave Is Coming: Industry Should Ride It
America’s artificial intelligence industry is increasingly likely to face government regulations that could blunt innovation. There is a perfect storm brewing on Capitol Hill, and in statehouses and city governments around the country. Growing unease over possible negative impacts of AI on American society, and increased awareness that technological developments are outpacing lawmakers’ ability to craft rules and provide oversight is likely to lead to well-intentioned but poorly-crafted regulations that will constrain research, development and deployment of AI technologies. (Martijn Rasser, 1/24)