Los Angeles Times: Orange County And South O.C. Cities Sued For Not Stepping Up To House The Homeless
Advocates for the homeless this week sued five Orange County cities and the county for failing to provide more housing for people living on the streets. Officials at the Orange County Catholic Worker and the Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, nonprofits supporting the homeless, singled out the South Orange County cities of Aliso Viejo, Dana Point, Irvine, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano in a lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of three homeless individuals. (Do, 2/28)

Capital Public Radio/KXJZ: Finding Housing For Homeless People Still A Challenge As Sacramento’s ‘Whole Person Care’ Program Expands 
Pathways debuted in November 2017 with funding from the city of Sacramento and the major health systems, and there could be up to $64 million allocated for the four-year program, depending on a match from the federal government. There are similar federally funded pilot programs in 25 jurisdictions statewide, all under what’s referred to as the “whole person care” model. (Caiola, 2/28)

Ventura County Star: Ventura County Medical Center To Hire Strategy Business Leader
A strategy and growth leader will be hired to help boost the fortunes of Ventura County Medical Center under a preliminary vote this week. The new executive will be expected to bring in new business as VCMC tries to get a bigger share of the private insurance market, the head of the Ventura County Health Care Agency said after the Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote Tuesday in Ventura. ...Managers are trying to improve the bottom line at the medical center, which finished the past fiscal year with a deficit of almost $8 million. The medical center is a network of two hospitals in Ventura and Santa Paula along with dozens of clinics spread across the county. (Wilson, 2/28)

Oakland Tribune: BAART, Concord Settle Lawsuit Over Methadone Clinic
After a three-year fight that culminated in a lawsuit against the city last year, an addiction treatment group will be allowed to open a methadone clinic on Solano Way. Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment (BAART) Programs filed a federal lawsuit against the city last August accusing it of discriminating against people seeking methadone treatment by denying a permit for the clinic, which proposed to provide outpatient substance abuse treatment, including methadone and other medications, as well as counseling to people suffering from opioid addiction. (Sciacca, 3/1)

Politico: Establishment Dems Give Medicare-For-All The Brush Off
House Democratic leaders gave their liberal lawmakers what they wanted on health care. Now they’re fighting to keep “Medicare for All“ from devouring the party. Progressives emboldened by this week's bill rollout are vowing to turn up the pressure on fellow Democrats to back the single-payer blueprint and build momentum ahead of the 2020 election. That’s already creating headaches for top Democrats who fear the political blowback of the plan’s most liberal elements, including abortion funding and the elimination of most private health insurance. (Cancryn, 2/28)

The Hill: Key Dem Chairman Voices Skepticism On 'Medicare For All' Bill 
House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is expressing skepticism about a new "Medicare for all" bill introduced this week, although he has supported similar measures in the past. Yarmuth, who has supported Medicare for all bills since arriving in the House in 2006, says a new version introduced this week by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) goes far beyond what he considers to be Medicare for all. (Hellmann, 2/28)

The New York Times: F.D.A. Says Canadian Company, CanaRx, Sells Unsafe Medicines To U.S. Buyers
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday said a major Canadian drug distributor was selling unapproved and mislabeled medicines to unsuspecting Americans looking to save money on prescriptions, and warned it to stop. The company, CanaRx, sells many common prescription medicines at a lower cost to hundreds of public and private employer programs in the United States. Many of its buyers are city and county governments seeking to save money, among them: Albany, N.Y. and Duluth, Minn. CanaRx says the medications it sells are high-quality, from Canada, Australia and Britain, but the F.D.A. said this is not always the case. (Kaplan, 2/28)

The Hill: Liberal Groups Call On Dem Leaders To Go Bigger On Drug Price Legislation
A coalition of leading liberal organizations is calling on House Democratic leaders to take bolder stances in proposing legislation to lower drug prices and go further than allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. “Although Medicare negotiation is a much-needed reform, it is not the only solution needed to reach most Americans,” the letter to House Democratic leaders states. “We need reforms that lower stratospheric launch prices for new drugs and prevent price gouging on existing drugs for all payers.” (Sullivan, 2/28)

Politico: HHS Demands Apology From House Ethics Chair For Comments On Abuse Of Migrant Children
Health and Human Services officials refused Thursday to meet with Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), saying the House Ethics Committee chair must first apologize for stating publicly earlier this week that HHS staff sexually abused migrant children in agency custody. "By deliberately or negligently mischaracterizing the data during a televised hearing, you impugned the integrity of hundreds of federal civil servants," Jonathan Hayes, the HHS refugee director, wrote Deutch on Thursday, in a letter obtained by POLITICO. HHS has been seeking an apology for two days. (Diamond and Bresnahan, 2/28)

NPR: High Drug Prices: Americans Support Government Intervention
About a quarter of Americans surveyed say they've had trouble paying for their prescription drugs, and a majority welcome government action to help cut the cost of medications. A survey released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation finds that many people have skipped or rationed their prescription medications or have substituted cheaper over-the-counter drugs. The result? Those who ration their meds are often sicker, the poll finds. (Kodjak, 3/1)

Modern Healthcare: Time's Up Launches Healthcare Branch To Address Harassment
A healthcare offshoot of Time's Up will officially launch on March 1 to try to bring safety and equity to the workplace. Time's Up was spawned out of the #MeToo movement, which gained global attention in 2017 as scores of women shared their stories of sexual harassment on social media. Time's Up has since spread to multiple industries as it looks to spur change. (Kacik, 2/28)

Stat: NIH Apologizes For Failure To Address Sexual Harassment In Science
The National Institutes of Health on Thursday apologized for its past failures to recognize and address the culture of sexual harassment that has impacted scientists for generations. “To all those who have endured these experiences, we are sorry that it has taken so long to acknowledge and address the climate and culture that has caused such harm,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement. ((Facher and Thielking, 2/28)

USA Today: African-American Enrollment In Medical School Lags Other Groups
Gabriel Felix is on track to graduate from Howard University's medical school in May. The 27-year-old from Rockland County, N.Y., has beaten the odds to make it this far, and knows he faces challenges going forward. He and other black medical school students have grown used to dealing with doctors' doubts about their abilities, and other slights: being confused with hospital support staff, or being advised to pick a nickname because their actual names would be too difficult to pronounce. (O'Donnell and Robinson, 2/28)

Politico: New CPAC Stars: Black Gun Rights Activists
For a few minutes at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday afternoon, the message was more Malcolm X than William F. Buckley. Sporting a red hoodie, his hair in cornrows, Maj Toure touted his group, Black Guns Matter. "We go where there's high violence, high crime, high gun control — high slave mentalities, to be perfectly honest,” he said, “and inform urban America about their human right, as stated in the Second Amendment, to defend their life." (Schreckinger, 3/1)

Los Angeles Times: 'Medicare For All’ Is Popular, But It's Likely Doomed To Fail 
America’s fascination with Medicare for all is born of good intentions. Americans are hurting and in search of relief. Nearly 30% of U.S. adults struggle to pay their medical bills, and more than 20% say they’ve put off treatment or filling a prescription because of cost. Unfortunately, in our search for a magic pill, we’ve missed the key point. Government-run programs work well in the rest of the world because the cost of medical care delivery — what doctors, nurses and drug companies get paid — is considerably less than in the United States. Lowering the cost of care would mean reining in drug prices, eliminating unnecessary procedures, and closing small, inefficient hospitals. Until we do, every approach, including Medicare for all, will fail. There is no painless solution, no magic pill. (Robert Pearl, 2/28)

Sacramento Bee: Legislature Must Commit To Miracle Drugs, Fight Rare Diseases
Around 30 million Americans, including nearly four million Californians, are affected by rare diseases. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, there are more than 7,000 of these conditions. Around half of rare disease patients are children. If you know a family facing a rare disease, you’ve seen what they go through. Fighting one of these conditions is like having a second full-time job with the sole purpose of keeping a loved one alive. It often starts with a diagnostic odyssey, during which no one can figure out why their child is sick. This can go on for months or years. (Rob Bonta, 2/28)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego's Plans For Housing, Homeless, Transportation Run Into Resistance
San Diegans increasingly are told they need to do more — and pay more — to help the homeless, increase the housing stock, and expand street and trolley systems. Clearly, a lot of them don't like it. It’s not that they don’t want to get people off the street, reduce the cost of homes and have a better, more environmentally friendly way to get around. They just don’t want it to change their neighborhoods, diminish their quality of life or raise their taxes. (Michael Smolens, 3/1)

Los Angeles Times: Immigrants Are Suffering In Detention. They Need Adequate Healthcare Now
This week, a 45-year-old immigrant in the U.S. illegally died in Border Patrol custody. His death follows the December deaths of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez in United States immigration custody, both of which prompted demands for improving healthcare for immigrants in detention. As a physician who has evaluated dozens of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention for legal groups and human rights organizations, I know that high-profile deaths are only one small piece of the story of severely substandard healthcare in America’s immigration detention system. (Altaf Saadi, 2/25)

San Jose Mercury News: Trump Gag Rule Devastates Women’s Access To Health Care
Trump announced that his administration will bar organizations that provide abortion referrals from participating in the $286 million Title X federal family-planing program that serves more than 4 million patients, mostly low-income women. Congress can’t make it right. Not with Trump poised to veto corrective legislation. (2/26)

Sacramento Bee: In California Criminal Justice System, Women Are Not Equal To Men
Many Americans are familiar with the plight of Cyntoia Brown, a young sex trafficking victim who spent more than 15 years in prison for killing her would-be rapist before receiving clemency from Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. The push for Brown’s clemency was fueled by civil rights groups, activists and celebrities who tweeted and made calls for her cause. Brown’s release deserves celebration, but she’s but one of thousands of incarcerated women in similar circumstances. And while arrest rates in general continue to drop, arrest rates for women — for everything from misdemeanors to violent felonies — have risen in California. This disturbing trend requires further investigation and action. (Nicola Smith-Kea, 2/27)

Los Angeles Times: After His First Overdose, My Husband Promised It Wouldn't Happen Again. I Believed Him 
The first time I saved my husband’s life, his face was the color of saturated denim. I found him curled on the floor, body fighting itself. Limbs constricted, shoulders twitching, he snorted desperately as his lungs gasped for oxygen. I yelled his name, shook his arm, slapped his face. The sputtering sound came less often, and he was so, so blue. “Has your husband ingested or administered any opioids?” the paramedic asked after they pushed me aside. (Lauren Mauldin, 2/24)

San Jose Mercury News: The Perfect Storm Of Problems Californians Are Ignoring
Californians brag that their state is the world’s fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods. Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological dominance of West Coast culture. (Victor Davis Hanson, 2/28)

San Jose Mercury News: Camp Fire Admission Is The Last Straw For PG&E
PG&E’s admission Thursday that its equipment probably caused last year’s catastrophic Camp Fire is the last straw. It’s time to replace the utility company. Perhaps that means selling it off. Perhaps breaking it up. Or perhaps it’s time for a government takeover. Although all those options have significant issues. What’s clear is that PG&E cannot continue to exist in its current form. (3/1)