- California Healthline Original Stories 1
- Using Drones And Ditties To Help Hunt Down Disease-Bearing Mosquitoes
- Around California 1
- Investing In Homeless Shelters Can Suck Up Funding That Could Be Spent Elsewhere
- National Roundup 3
- Migrant Children Must Be Reunited With Parents Immediately, Mental Health Experts Say
- Don't Get Distracted By High Drug Costs, It's Surgery That's Driving Health Spending, Gawande Says
- Amid Years Of Dashed Hopes Over Alzheimer's Breakthroughs, Study Linking Common Virus To Disease Fans Hope
Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Using Drones And Ditties To Help Hunt Down Disease-Bearing Mosquitoes
Last year, 44 Californians died from West Nile virus. Invasive mosquitoes that can carry the illness, as well as other serious diseases such as Zika, are spreading across the state. Mosquito-control officials are responding with new and aggressive tactics to limit the threat. (Alex Leeds Matthews, )
More News From Across The State
Virtual Visits Allow Patients To Get Care With Added Twist Of Convenience
Qualcomm Exploring Sale Of A Majority Stake In Tele-Health Subsidiary
The potential sale is unsurprising in the wake of Qualcomm’s promise to cut costs. To trim expenses, Qualcomm has announced around 1,800 layoffs in the U.S. so far – including 1,300 in San Diego.
The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Amid Cost Cuts, Qualcomm Eyes Partial Sale Of Health Tech Subsidiary Qualcomm Life
Qualcomm is exploring the sale of a majority stake in its tele-health subsidiary Qualcomm Life as part of its pledge to shave $1 billion in annual costs, according to sources familiar with the matter. The San Diego cellular technology giant intends to retain minority ownership of Qualcomm Life, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary, according to sources who asked not to be identified. Qualcomm has hired advisers, said sources. The potential deal has generated interest from private equity firms and strategic investors, which could include medical hardware/software outfits and technology companies looking to expand into the health tech sector. (Freeman, 6/21)
Investing In Homeless Shelters Can Suck Up Funding That Could Be Spent Elsewhere
A report shows that it would cost LA $657 million to shelter its homeless population in the first year. It's unlikely officials will go that route though, preferring to divert resources to other programs to help curb homelessness.
LAist:
Here's What It Would Cost To Shelter Every Homeless Person — And Why LA Will Never Do It
There are more than 23,000 so-called “unsheltered” homeless people in the city. And, although there are some restrictions, the city more or less allows people to make beds out of public spaces. Some see this as a general permissiveness toward homelessness, but there’s a reasoning behind it — some of it stemming from legal settlements.The city lacks adequate shelter space to accommodate its homeless population. (Palta, 6/22)
In other news from across the state —
KPBS:
Delores Jacobs Bids Farewell To San Diego LGBT Community Center
[Delores] Jacobs, who has served as the CEO of the San Diego LGBT Community Center since 2001, will be formally stepping down from her position at the end of this month. In her 17-year tenure, Jacobs founded a youth leadership academy, expanded transgender-focused counseling and support groups and started programming at a North Park affordable housing project for LGBT seniors. (Bowen, 6/22)
Migrant Children Must Be Reunited With Parents Immediately, Mental Health Experts Say
Although President Donald Trump ended his family separation policy, there's no plans to address the children that have already been taken from their parents. Some advocates have suggested that public genetic testing sites could aid in the process of reuniting families. Meanwhile, there's profit to be made off the health care needs of those held at the border. And chaos reigns supreme even after the president's executive order.
The Hill:
Dems, Health Groups Demand Immigrant Children Be Quickly Reunited With Families
Democrats and medical professionals on Thursday called for children separated from their families at the border to be immediately reunited to minimize any long-term harm to their mental and physical health. “The executive order President Trump signed yesterday does not resolve this crisis that he created,” said Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) at a press conference with representatives of health groups. (Hellmann, 6/21)
Modern Healthcare:
Immigrant Detention Crisis Could Yield Profit For Some Providers And Payers
As Congress flounders in another messy immigration debate, medical contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars could grow amid the fallout of President Donald Trump's executive order to halt his own policy to separate families illegally entering the country. Healthcare for detained immigrants—both children and adults—is a sprawling, confusing system where various government agencies contract with networks of doctors and community hospitals. It is also an expensive system whose costs are hard to predict and manage since they are based on unexpected surges in people crossing the border. (Luthi, 6/21)
The Washington Post:
The Chaotic Effort To Reunite Immigrant Parents With Their Separated Kids
Each of the mothers had a different memory of the moment she was separated from her child. For some, it was outside a Border Patrol station just north of the Rio Grande, shortly after being apprehended. For others, it was after an interrogation by federal authorities in a bitterly cold air-conditioned office. Jodi Goodwin, an attorney in Harlingen, Tex., has heard more than two dozen variations of those stories from Central American mothers who have been detained for days or weeks without their children. So far, she has not been able to locate a single one of their offspring. (Sieff, 6/21)
The New York Times:
No Relief In Sight For Parents Of Thousands Of Migrant Children Still In Custody
Micaela Samol Gonzalez, dressed in blue detention scrubs, made her way to the front of a windowless courtroom in Colorado on Thursday and faced the judge. After she gave her name and arranged a future court date for her immigration case, the judge asked whether she had any questions. She had just one. (Healy, 6/21)
The Associated Press:
Confusion And Uncertainty At The Border After Trump Acts
The U.S. government wrestled with the ramifications Thursday of President Donald Trump’s move to stop separating families at the border, with no clear plan to reunite the more than 2,300 children already taken from their parents and Congress again failing to take action on immigration reform. In a day of confusion and conflicting reports, the Trump administration began drawing up plans to house as many as 20,000 migrants on U.S. military bases. But officials gave differing accounts as to whether those beds would be for children or for entire families. (Merchant and Bryan, 6/21)
Don't Get Distracted By High Drug Costs, It's Surgery That's Driving Health Spending, Gawande Says
Dr. Atul Gawande will be heading up the health care initiative formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase that's geared toward starving the "tapeworm on the American economy." While many people's attention is focused on skyrocketing drug prices, Gawande says that is just 10 percent” of total U.S. healthcare spending.
Reuters:
Head Of New U.S. Corporate Health Plan Cites Surgery As Biggest Cost
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who was named this week to head the company being formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to trim employee healthcare costs, on Thursday cited surgery as the single biggest U.S. healthcare cost and said there are ways to both cut costs and improve patient care. Speaking in San Diego at the annual meeting of America's Health Insurance Plans, a health insurance trade association, Gawande also said that end-of-life care needs to take into account the wishes of patients, something which he said is now sorely lacking. (Beasley, 6/21)
Bloomberg:
Atul Gawande Says His Goal Is Better Health Care For 1 Million Workers
“We will come to a place where we can generate scalable solutions that change the practice of medicine,” Gawande said at the America’s Health Insurance Plans conference in San Diego on Thursday, a day after he was appointed chief executive officer of the health-care partnership. “It’s a long road, but it clearly is possible.” The not-for-profit startup aims to improve care and lower costs for the three companies by creating systems that connect complex medical services with patient counseling while reducing waste caused by irrelevant tests or costly treatment that doesn’t improve quality of life, Gawande said, citing his research as a medical journalist. (Gittelsohn, 6/21)
Stat:
How Can Atul Gawande Help Reinvent Health Care With His New Company?
Dr. Atul Gawande is set to become the chief executive of a new health care company being formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase. The company, which has yet to be named, is being launched with lofty ambitions: to find innovative ways to improve health care for employees of the three companies. But its founders have hinted that company-wide solutions could help find solutions to problems across the entire U.S. health system. (Chen, 6/21)
A new study suggests that certain viruses could kick-start an immune response that might increase the accumulation of amyloid, a protein in human brains which clumps into the telltale plaques of Alzheimer’s. Scientists are being very cautious to warn that this might not prove anything, but it's one of the few developments the field has seen in decades.
The New York Times:
A Common Virus May Play Role In Alzheimer’s Disease, Study Finds
It has long been a controversial theory about Alzheimer’s disease, often dismissed by experts as a sketchy cul-de-sac off the beaten path from mainstream research. But a new study by a team that includes prominent Alzheimer’s scientists who were previously skeptics of this theory may well change that. The research offers compelling evidence for the idea that viruses might be involved in Alzheimer’s, particularly two types of herpes that infect most people as infants and then lie dormant for years. (Belluck, 6/21)
The Associated Press:
New Evidence That Viruses May Play A Role In Alzheimer's
The findings don't prove viruses cause Alzheimer's, nor do they suggest it's contagious. But a team led by researchers at New York's Mount Sinai Health System found that certain viruses — including two extremely common herpes viruses — affect the behavior of genes involved in Alzheimer's. The idea that infections earlier in life might somehow set the stage for Alzheimer's decades later has simmered at the edge of mainstream medicine for years. It's been overshadowed by the prevailing theory that Alzheimer's stems from sticky plaques that clog the brain. (6/21)
Los Angeles Times:
Surprising Discovery About Viruses And Alzheimer’s Disease Could Open New Avenues For Treatment
Their surprise discovery emerged as researchers sorted through a vast genomic data bank in search of new ideas for treating Alzheimer’s with drugs designed for other diseases. The study’s authors pored over DNA and RNA sequencing data from 622 brains donated by people affected by Alzheimer’s and 322 brains that were free of the disease. The data they mined is usually discarded, but was archived instead by the National Institutes of Health in a bid to accelerate the discovery of new treatments by fostering “big data” collaborations. This one brought together scientists at Arizona State University’s Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center and Alzheimer’s experts at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. (Healy, 6/21)
Stat:
Herpes Viruses Could Play Role In Alzheimer's, New Study Finds
During the 14 months that the two studies have been stuck in publication limbo, experimental Alzheimer’s drugs based on the quarter-century-old “amyloid cascade hypothesis” have been flaming out, each more spectacularly than before. (The hypothesis says that production of an aberrant protein called amyloid-beta creates sticky plaques that destroy brain synapses and neurons.) This year alone has brought the demise of the Eli Lilly/AstraZeneca drug lanabecestat; Lilly’s solanezumab; and Merck’s verubecestat. That brings the number of effective Alzheimer’s treatments based on the amyloid cascade hypothesis to … zero, making the need for new ideas more urgent than ever. (Begley, 6/21)
NPR:
Herpes Viruses And Alzheimer's: A Possible Link
Once the researchers knew the viruses were associated with Alzheimer's they started trying to figure out how a virus could affect the course of a brain disease. That meant identifying interactions between the virus genes and other genes in brain cells. "We mapped out the social network, if you will, of which genes the viruses are friends with and who they're talking to inside the brain," Dudley says. In essence, he says, they wanted to know: "If the viruses are tweeting, who's tweeting back?" And what they found was that the herpes virus genes were interacting with genes known to increase a person's risk for Alzheimer's. They also found that these Alzheimer's risk genes seem to make a person's brain more vulnerable to infection with the two herpes viruses. (Hamilton, 6/21)
Viewpoints: Innocent Children Do Not Belong In Traumatizing Jails Or Detention Centers
A selection of opinions on health care developments from around the state.
Los Angeles Times:
Caging Immigrant Children Alongside Their Parents Isn’t Much Of A Solution
The nation should be thankful that President Trump finally came to his senses and ended the inhumane and traumatizing practice of separating children from their immigrant parents who illegally enter the United States. Facing an extraordinary backlash not just from Democrats but from some Republicans, every living former first lady (and, amazingly, the current one), United Nations human rights officials, Willie Nelson, Pope Francis and many, many others who reacted in dismay to scenes of children corralled in metal cages, Trump probably had little choice. But his solution — detaining entire families together while the adults face, in most cases, misdemeanor charges of illegal entry — raises enormously troubling problems of its own. (6/21)
The Mercury News:
Treatment Programs For Homeless Youth Need Oversight
Two days a week, my team and I from Stanford Children’s Hospital deliver health care to underserved kids from a mobile clinic. This was how we met Mary (not her real name), a homeless teen girl who came in for help with depression. Like so many young people who call cars, streets or shelters their home, Mary’s health was a complicated knot of mental health conditions, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior and the effects of life on the streets. Cases like Mary’s illustrate the complexity of treating young people with addiction. They also illustrate what is at stake as California, soon to be flush with new cash from the state’s marijuana tax, ramps up substance abuse programs for adolescents. Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, is the author of SB 275, which puts in place sorely needed standards and oversight to ensure that hundreds of millions of dollars targeted for youth treatment over the next few years are well-spent. (Dr. Seth Ammerman, 6/21)
Sacramento Bee:
California: Students Get Shot Outside School Too
The nation is understandably shocked by recent mass shootings at schools and wants something done – if anyone could figure out what that is. What’s harder for the public to realize is that the number of students shot at school represents less than 5 percent of the more than 17,000 who are killed or injured every year in gun violence in the United States, whether that means being shot by others or committing suicide. (Karin Klein, 6/19)
Los Angeles Times:
The Latest Trump Healthcare Fix Is Better Than Most. But That Doesn't Mean It's Good
The Trump administration on Tuesday released the details of its latest effort to cut some Americans’ insurance premiums — and undermine Obamacare in the process. The surprise is that, unlike every other initiative from this crew, it may well help some people obtain real coverage at a lower price. What’s not surprising is that the move will make the state Obamacare exchanges more expensive and less stable than they are today. (Jon Healey, 6/19)
San Diego Union-Times:
Seniors Will Lose Out With Trump's Drug Plan. Here's How.
Every businessperson understands the “art of the deal” has little to do with art and everything to do with leverage. But as we discovered when President Donald Trump released his long-promised plan to lower drug prices, the business of politics often trumps real-world business principles. Nowhere in the ironically titled “American Patients First” blueprint is there any requirement for Medicare to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers. So, despite all of Trump’s rhetoric and promises, pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists won, and seniors lost. Patients are not the first priority after all. (Gary West, 6/15)
Sacramento Bee:
Why Should California Lag Behind On Protecting Workers From Dangerous Lead?
It created a national scandal when residents of Flint, Michigan, had to drink and bathe in water badly tainted with lead. Closer to home, the city of Sacramento’s Mangan Park gun range made headlines when it was revealed that it was loaded, both inside and out, with extremely high levels of dangerous lead dust – and that the California Department of Public Health knew about lead-poisoned workers for years without acting. (Bill Allayaud and Joe Rubin, 6/19)
Modesto Bee:
Studies Make Clear What We Already Know -- Time For A Med School At UC Merced
In a time when people across the state are discussing the need for universal healthcare coverage, we cannot overlook the fact that in parts of the state having a health insurance card does not mean that you get to see a doctor. Too many people in Merced County still go to emergency rooms for needs that could be managed by primary care physicians, if only they could find one who is accepting new patients. (Gray, 6/20)
Los Angeles Times:
Coffee Isn't Going To Kill Anyone. California Needs A Smarter System To Let Us Know What's Dangerous
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle ruled in March that coffee should carry the warning labels mandated by California’s Proposition 65 because the brew contains acrylamide, a chemical that some studies found increases the incidence of cancer in rats. It was an unfortunate outcome of a ridiculous lawsuit by an opportunistic attorney that never should have been filed. Acrylamide is a naturally occurring chemical formed when coffee is roasted (and when starchy foods such as potatoes are cooked at high heat). But the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which reviewed 1,000 studies, reported last week that there is just no proof that coffee causes cancer. Furthermore, there’s a wealth of scientific data indicating that coffee consumption has health benefits and may even ward off premature death, perhaps because of the other chemicals present in the average cup of joe. (6/18)
Sacramento Bee:
Why Raw Milk Is Dangerous And Needs To Be Regulated
Rates of serious illness from drinking “raw” or unpasteurized milk products are increasing. They need to be more strictly regulated. As a pediatrician at a Sacramento area hospital, I have seen the cost to families. An adorable 2-year-old boy with bright blue eyes was hospitalized for weeks, with a dialysis catheter coming out of his chest, after his kidneys failed from E coli. His parents tried their best to keep his spirits up, but the situation became traumatic for him. Sometimes kids’ kidneys do not recover. Sometimes they require a renal transplant. (Vidhi Jhaveri, 6/14)
Los Angeles Times:
Proposed Needle Exchange Program Is A Poor Fit For Costa Mesa Neighborhood
Under California law, any needle-exchange program must provide for the safe recovery and disposal of used syringes and sharps waste from all of its participants. How did this work out? By late 2017, the Santa Ana Civic Center was infested with discarded needles. (Sandra L. Genis, 6/18)
San Francisco Chronicle:
What’s Ignored In The Debate Over Aid In Dying
The controversial 2015 legalization of medical aid in dying was in effect for almost two years before it was ruled unconstitutional on May 25 by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Ottolia. Friday’s reinstatement of the law, while the appeals process plays out, is another twist in the increasingly dramatic fight that goes to the core of what Californians want when it comes to choices at the end of life. (Jessica Nutik Zitter, 6/18)
Sacramento Bee:
Chemical Flame Retardants Are Toxic. It’s Time For California To Ban Them.
When furniture burns, dangerous byproducts are created that make the air even more toxic. California needs to step up and get these toxins out of our consumer products once and for all. (Brian K. Rice and Laura Deehan, 6/19)