KQED: Lead Paint Makers Balk At Huge Toxic Cleanup Bill — They Want You To Pick Up The Tab
Three companies found to have sold toxic lead paint for decades -- despite knowing it posed health hazards for children -- are waging a major battle to avoid paying the several hundred millions of dollars in liability that California courts have slapped on them. ... The companies have hired a slew of lobbyists to push their agenda in the state Legislature and poured $6 million into a campaign to put an initiative on the November ballot that would shift clean-up costs to taxpayers. (Rosenhall, 5/10)

In other public health news —

Los Angeles Times: Fatal Falls Are On The Rise For America’s Senior Citizens
Fatal falls are on the rise in the United States, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, a total of 29,668 Americans ages 65 and older died as a result of a fall. In other words, falls ended the lives of 61.6 out of every 100,000 senior citizens that year. Back in 2007, there were 47 fall-related deaths for every 100,000 senior citizens. (Kaplan, 5/10)

The Associated Press: San Francisco's Many Free Syringes Are Littering Its Streets
San Francisco hands out millions of syringes a year to drug users but has little control over how they are discarded and that's contributing to thousands of complaints. The city distributes an estimated 400,000 syringes each month through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users. About 246,000 syringes are discarded through the city's 13 syringe access and disposal sites. But thousands of the others end up on streets, in parks and other public areas, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday. (5/10)

In other news on the crisis —

KQED: Top State Lawmaker: California Prisons Must Do More To Reduce Inmate Drug Overdoses 
California prison officials need to find new ways to prevent illegal opioid drugs from entering the prison system, according to the lawmaker who runs the state legislative committee that oversees the state's correctional system. State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who chairs the Senate's Public Safety Committee, says she wants the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to explain what it's doing to reduce inmate overdoses. (Goldberg, 5/10)

KQED: Where Do You Go When You Leave The Hospital But Are Homeless? 
A bill under consideration in Sacramento aims to address this practice, which some advocates call "patient dumping." They say hospitals commonly discharge homeless patients by sending them to social service agencies or other nonprofits, and they do this without contacting those locations first. (Klivans, 5/10)

Reuters: Trump Plan For Drug Prices Seen Largely Sparing Industry
As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to deliver a long-anticipated speech on Friday on curbing prescription drug costs, health industry insiders expect little in the way of policies that would hurt the drugmakers he once accused of "getting away with murder." The speech will address the high prices set by drugmakers, rising costs for consumers and barriers to negotiating lower prices for seniors in the government's Medicare program, senior White House officials told reporters. (5/10)

The Associated Press: In Taking On High Drug Prices, Trump Faces A Complex Nemesis
Officials said the plan would increase competition, create incentives for drugmakers to lower initial prices and slash federal rules that make it harder for private insurers to negotiate lower prices. The result would be lower pharmacy costs for patients — a key Trump campaign promise. (5/11)

The New York Times: Trump To Drop Call For Medicare To Negotiate Lower Drug Prices
Asked if the plan would include direct negotiations by Medicare, the official said, “No, we are talking about something different.” “We are not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way that Democrats have called for,” the official said later. “We clearly want to make important changes that will dramatically improve the way negotiation takes place inside the Medicare program.” (Pear, 5/10)

The Hill: Trump Will Not Call For Negotiation On Medicare Drug Prices Despite Democratic Hopes
Democrats have been pressuring Trump ahead of his speech to renew his call for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, something that Trump touted on the campaign trail in 2016, in a break with Republican party orthodoxy. (Sullivan, 5/10)

Stat: White House Trumpeting Drug Plan As Most Far-Reaching 'Of Any President'
Officials also said the policy changes could happen sooner than later. The “vast majority” of the proposals will be regulatory actions the “president can direct the administration to take.” In the plan, Trump will address a quartet of issues the administration has identified, the officials said. “The blueprint focuses on four major problems: high list prices set by drug manufacturers, rising out-of-pocket costs for consumers and patients, foreign governments free-riding off American innovation, and government rules preventing private plans from negotiating better deals for our seniors, especially for high-cost medications,” one official said. (Mershon, 5/11)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Set To Announce Plan To Curb Drug Prices
The president will also propose changes to government rules that his administration contends have allowed drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers to game the system, the officials said. He will also try to make foreign governments pay more to buy drugs created through U.S. innovation and further seek to accelerate the use of generic drugs in place of higher-cost brand names, they said. Low-income seniors could get free generic drugs, doctors might see reduced incentives to select more expensive drugs if cheaper alternatives exist, and health plans could be required to share rebates with beneficiaries, as part of the proposals. (Armour, Radnofsky and Burton, 5/10)

Politico: Trump Touts Plan To Lower Drug Costs But Rejects Medicare Negotiations
Trump will also move to rein in what his administration has characterized as “foreign freeloaders” — or first-world countries that use government controls or negotiations to hold down their drug costs. “The U.S. taxpayer, through our publicly funded research efforts as well as through patients and consumers … are largely paying for the vast majority of the R&D that goes into the development of new biologics,” a senior administration official said, lamenting that foreign countries get to “free ride” off of U.S. investment in drug development. (Cancryn and Pittman, 5/10)

The Washington Post: What To Watch For In President Trump’s Long-Awaited Drug-Price Speech
No one with a stake in drug prices — whether pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate on drug prices or health insurers — feels completely comfortable, given Trump's tendency to go off-script — including that time he accused drug companies of “getting away with murder.” But the administration has spent the past few weeks dropping clues about the policy directions it favors — including a slew of technical proposals that do little to threaten the pharmaceutical industry that would seem to be at greatest risk from any plan to lower drug prices. (Johnson, 5/10)

Stat: Democrats Offer Counterpoint To Trump's Drug Pricing Policy Before Speech
A coterie of the country’s most powerful and recognizable Democrats gathered Thursday to offer their early rebuttal to President Trump’s anticipated Friday address on drug prices. As one lawmaker put it, the group was “hopeful, but … not optimistic” that Trump would deliver on his early promises to lower prescription drug prices. What they want to see, however, is far broader than anything that top Trump administration officials have hinted at ahead of Trump’s Friday speech. (Mershon, 5/10)

The Hill: Trump Health Chief Defends Short-Term Insurance Plans
President Trump’s goal of expanding short-term health plans will not harm the insurance marketplace, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday. Under questioning from Senate Democrats during a hearing on the HHS budget, Azar repeatedly defended a proposed rule from the administration that would allow the sale of short-term health plans for up to an entire year. (Weixel, 5/10)

In other national health care news —

Politico: Trump Challenge To Native Americans' Health Splits HHS, Alarms Hill GOP
HHS leaders want states to settle the contentious question of whether Native Americans should get jobs in order to keep their health care — a move that likely won't resolve the underlying challenge to tribal sovereignty and was sparked by an unusual split between the agency's politically appointed administrators and legal counsel. The agency's position that tribes are a racial group and not separate governments — a determination by Trump administration lawyers that POLITICO first detailed last month — has raised concerns in Congress and alarmed the tribes, who say it reverses centuries of protections enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court. (Diamond and Pradhan, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Top White House Official In Charge Of Pandemic Response Exits Abruptly
The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton. The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security. Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack. (Sun, 5/10)

Bloomberg: Native Americans Demanding Chance To Try Opioid Suits Separately 
Native American tribes devastated by the U.S. opioid epidemic asked a judge set up a separate track for their lawsuits targeting makers and distributors of the painkillers for creating a public-health crisis. Santee Sioux Nation of Nebraska, the Winnebago Tribe and others feel “marginalized’’ by having their cases lumped in with states’ opioid claims, David Domina, a lawyer for the tribes, told U.S. District Judge Daniel Polster Thursday. Polster, who has been pressing for a quick resolution of the suits, said he’d consider the request. (Feeley, 5/10)

Stat: Artificial Intelligence May Not Be Curing Cancer, But It's Changing Medicine
As recently as a year ago, artificial intelligence was still an amorphous concept in medicine. Almost every major hospital was tinkering with it, but hype about algorithms replacing doctors — or curing cancer — was outrunning reality. Now many hospitals are moving swiftly to incorporate the technology into daily practice, promising to harness patient data to improve certain aspects of care and make medical services cheaper and more efficient. (Ross, 5/11)

Orange County Register: Health Policy Reform Or Wealth Transfer?
Our health insurance debate has become so contentious largely because it has allowed massive wealth transfers to be mis-represented as improving health insurance. It helped dishonestly sell Obamacare, and now portrays reducing massive theft from those government targeted to hold the bag as imposing heartless harm on others. (Gary Galles, 5/9)

The Mercury News: U.S. Seniors Deserve More Than Canadian Health Care
[I]n the California Legislature, Democratic lawmakers, at the urging of the California Nurses Association, are pushing a statewide single-payer system. Before Americans rush to implement Canadian-style health care, they should ask their northern neighbors about life under single-payer. Their answers would surely curb American enthusiasm for the concept. According to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund, one in three Canadian seniors isn’t satisfied with the quality of care she receives — a far larger share than in any similar country, including the United States. (Sally C. Pipes, 5/9)

Los Angeles Times: Rushing Foster Kids Into Quick Adoptions Isn't Always In Their Best Interest
A 1997 federal law called the Adoption and Safe Families Act forces states to push for quick adoption, regardless of whether another arrangement may make more sense. ... Yet, we know too little to conclude that adoptions make sense for all of them. (Vivek Sankaran, 5/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Those Needles Littering The Streets? The City Gave Them Out
For all of City Hall’s tough talk of late about getting needles off the streets, the city itself is responsible for helping fuel the problem — handing out millions of syringes a year with little or no controls over their return. And while the easy access to clean syringes is intended to protect public health, the city’s residents are not happy with the situation. (Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: Cancer Warnings For Coffee May Be Overkill, But Proposition 65 Is Not
It's official: Coffee sold in California must carry cancer warnings, a Los Angeles judge ruled this week. The warnings are required by California law, Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said, because of the presence of acrylamide, a chemical that is formed when coffee beans are roasted and that remains in the final beverage. The decision finalized a tentative ruling Berle had made in March. Since the initial ruling, an outpouring of commentary has suggested that, as one opinion writer put it, California has gone off the "deep end." There is no evidence that coffee causes cancer, many pointed out, and warnings about trivial risks could cause more serious notifications to lose resonance. (Jennifer Liss Ohayon and Claudia Polsky, 5/10)

Los Angeles Times: Just Three Months After Congress Gave Children's Healthcare A 10-Year Lifeline, Trump Reneges
Those of us with long memories — defined in this turbocharged world as memories that date back more than 90 days — will recall that one of the biggest cliffhangers of that bygone season involved the funding of the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. CHIP, which costs the federal government a paltry $14.5 billion a year but covers 9 million children and pregnant mothers, finally got funded by Congress in January, more than three months after the lawmakers allowed it to expire. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: Target 'Gay Conversion Therapy,' Not Religion
In 2012 California enacted a law that bars licensed mental health providers from engaging in therapy designed to change the sexual orientation of patients under the age of 18. Now the state Senate is considering a sequel of sorts. But this new legislation is broader in its application — so broad that some critics are claiming that it could be used to interfere with the sale of religious books, even the Bible. Such fears may be farfetched. But AB 2943, which was passed by the Assembly last month, contains ambiguities that need to be cleared up if the legislation is to become law. (5/7)

Sacramento Bee: California: Shouldn't Trump's Big Mac Habit Be More Hazardous To His Health?
Until recently, when his doctor purportedly insisted that he start eating less junk food and more salads, President Donald Trump was among McDonald’s most loyal customers. It was said that during his campaign run, to maintain the energy necessary for all that extemporaneous speechifying, the famously non-exercising tycoon would routinely scarf down two Big Macs for lunch along with two Filet-of-Fish sandwiches, washing down all that with a chocolate milkshake. For anyone keeping score, that’s about 2,400 delicious, artery-choking calories, or 400 more than the maximum number the FDA says an average adult male is supposed to consume in an entire day. (David Freed, 5/9)