Oaklandside: Alameda Health System’s COVID-19 Memory Archive Shares Stories Of Frontline Workers
Anh Ho, an EKG technician at the Wilma Chan Highland Hospital Campus in East Oakland, has not forgotten what it felt like to contract COVID-19 for the first time. She was at work when she began feeling overwhelmed by the virus. “I remember my whole body was aching. It felt like something biting your bones,” Ho said in a video interview with Alameda Health System staff. One of her first thoughts was for the safety of her colleagues. “I said, ‘I’m not worried if I’m sick or not, I’m worried about the co-workers.’” Ho’s experience, along with other AHS staff, is documented in the COVID-19 Memory Archive, a new oral history project curated by the AHS public affairs and community engagement team. (Rodas, 5/11)

LAist: The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Is Officially Over, Does Access To Healthcare Go With It?
The formal end of the national Public Health Emergency on Thursday is largely a symbolic and psychological step, representing the country’s formal emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic. But behind the scenes, several core aspects of America’s pandemic-era emergency safety net are also coming to a close, from extra food assistance to automatic re-enrollment in Medicaid. Before the pandemic, people would regularly lose their Medicaid coverage if they started making too much money to qualify for the program, gained health care coverage through their employer or moved to a new state. But the federal government prohibited states from kicking people off Medicaid during the pandemic, even if they were no longer eligible. Now dozens of states are launching reviews of their Medicaid recipients and removing those deemed ineligible. (LAist, 5/11)

Los Angeles Times: How To Stay Safe As The COVID Public Health Emergency Ends
Ready or not, it’s over. The country’s public health emergency touched off in January 2020 by the sudden appearance of a novel coronavirus formally enters the history books when the day ends Thursday. (Healy, 5/11)

The New York Times: U.S. Ends Last Covid Travel Barrier, Vaccine Mandate For Foreign Arrivals 
International passengers traveling to the United States no longer have to show proof of vaccination against Covid as of midnight Thursday, when the coronavirus health emergency officially ended. The Biden administration dropped its requirement for coronavirus testing last June but kept in place its vaccination policy for foreign travelers. In February, the House of Representatives voted to end the last remaining pandemic restrictions on May 11. (Yeginsu, 5/12)

Axios: Exclusive: Inside HHS' Plan To Develop Next-Generation COVID Treatments
The Biden administration is pouring billions of dollars into the development of future coronavirus vaccines, trying to develop a sequel to Operation Warp Speed even as the public health emergency ends. The Department of Health and Human Services is fleshing out targets and putting an organizational framework around the $5 billion "Project NextGen," which will operate similarly to the Trump-era public-private partnership in speeding the development of new treatments. (Gonzalez, 5/11)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: With Plenty Of Vaccine On Hand, Sonoma County Doesn’t Expect Repeat Of Mpox Outbreaks This Summer
Dr. Jessica August, a Kaiser Permanente infectious disease expert, hasn’t seen a local mpox virus case since September, following an outbreak last summer that took many by surprise. Back then it was called monkeypox, a rare viral disease that occurred mostly in central and western Africa. U.S. health officials were slow to respond, and the lack of vaccine left many waiting in long lines. But this year, local infectious disease experts say they’re ready for it. (Espinoza, 5/11)

Reuters: WHO Declares End To Mpox Public Health Emergency 
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday it was ending a 10-month-long global health emergency for mpox, a viral disease that led to confirmed cases in more than a hundred countries. The organization declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern in July 2022 and backed its stand in November and February. (Mahobe and Sunny, 5/11)

Stat: Senate Panel Passes A Suite Of Drug Pricing Bills — But Fails To Advance One Major PBM Reform
The Senate health committee on Thursday passed a package of bills aimed at speeding generic drug competition and reining in drug middlemen business practices. But they failed to pass an ambitious reform to the pharmacy benefit manager sector, despite strong bipartisan support for it. (Wilkerson, 5/11)

Stat: Wyden Decries 'Astonishingly Low' Tax Rates For Pharma Companies
Thanks to changes in tax law six years ago, several of the largest pharmaceutical companies saw their tax rates fall substantially, but they also reported that most of their profits were shifted offshore in an effort to avoid paying U.S. taxes, according to a memo by a U.S. Senate Committee. (Silverman, 5/11)

Reuters: Pfizer CEO Calls US Drug Price Plan 'Negotiation With A Gun To Your Head'
Pfizer Inc Chief Executive Albert Bourla called U.S. plans to negotiate drug prices for its Medicare health program "negotiation with a gun to your head" and said he expects drugmakers to sue in an attempt to halt the process. "It is not negotiation at all. It is price setting," Bourla said at a Reuters newsmaker event on Thursday, referring to the Biden Administration’s signature drug pricing reform, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The law aims to save $25 billion through price negotiations by 2031 for Americans who pay more for medicines than any other country. (Erman and Satija, 5/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Will Get Millions To Help Combat Opioid Crisis, But How Will The Money Be Spent? 
San Diego is getting a $40 million cut of a settlement in a nationwide federal lawsuit targeting prescription opioid drug makers and distributors. (Figueroa, 5/11)

Los Angeles Daily News: Low Pay For Homeless Workers In LA County Makes Them Housing Insecure
Workers employed by nonprofit homeless services agencies in Los Angeles County often do not earn a living wage, creating stress for the workers and making it difficult to retain staff and provide services, according to a report released this week by the RAND Corporation. (Scauzillo, 5/11)

Los Angeles Times: A 15-Story Hotel Could Help L.A.'s Mayor Fight Homelessness
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ homelessness team is looking to purchase a 15-story hotel in the city’s Westlake neighborhood, the latest big expenditure planned as part of her “Inside Safe” program. In a memo sent to the council’s Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee, Bass and her team acknowledged they are seeking to acquire the 294-room Mayfair Hotel, which served for two years as interim homeless housing before closing its doors last summer. The building has been listed for nearly $70 million in recent months. (Zahniser, 5/12)

Los Angeles Times: NIMBYism Over Housing Spans Race And Politics, Firing Up Suburban Protests
Wilma Wu walked into the Hacienda Heights Community Center feeling upset that the powers that be were again trying to force her tranquil town to bear the burden of the county’s homelessness crisis. Los Angeles County had converted a Motel 6 into a temporary shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now officials wanted to turn it into long-term homeless housing. (Vives, 5/12)

Reuters: Teen Mental Health Emergency Visits Decline In U.S. As Pandemic Eases, CDC Says 
U.S. adolescents made fewer weekly emergency department (ED) visits for mental health conditions in Fall 2022 compared to a year earlier, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Thursday. By late 2022, pandemic restrictions had been loosened or lifted and adolescents had generally returned to schools, with better social engagement and reduced isolation linked with improved mental and behavioral health, the researchers noted. (5/11)

The Bakersfield Californian: City 'Holds Hope' For More State Funding To Help Homeless 
An average of 55 Kern County teens a month age out of foster care and end up on the street. In a 2022 report, the National Foster Youth Institute described the child welfare system as a “highway to homelessness” and estimated more than half of the nation’s homeless population spent at least some time in foster care. (Donegan, 5/11)

AP: Sex? Sexual Intercourse? Neither? Teens Weigh In On Evolving Definitions — And Habits 
Situationships. “Sneaky links.” The “talking stage,” the flirtatious getting-to-know-you phase — typically done via text — that can lead to a hookup. High school students are having less sexual intercourse. That’s what the studies say. But that doesn’t mean they’re having less sex. The language of young love and lust, and the actions behind it, are evolving. And the shift is not being adequately captured in national studies, experts say. (Gecker, 5/12)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Debt-Ceiling Meeting Postponed
A highly anticipated meeting scheduled for Friday between President Biden and congressional leaders to chart a path forward on lifting the debt ceiling was postponed until next week, officials said. The delay will give White House and congressional staff more time to make progress in their closed-door spending talks, the officials said, adding that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was unable to attend the Friday meeting because of a scheduling conflict. (Restuccia, Andrews and Harrison, 5/11)

Barron's: Breaching The Debt Ceiling Could Cripple Medicare And The Healthcare System 
A sustained breach of the debt ceiling would have a catastrophic impact on the country’s healthcare system, experts say, with the fallout reaching beyond government insurance programs like Medicare to the millions of Americans with private coverage. ... “Ultimately, if the federal government can’t pay the bills, the entire thing stops,” said Sara Rosenbaum, emerita professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. “The whole health system collapses.” (O'Brien, 5/12)

Vox: The Republican Plan To Sneakily Cut Medicaid, Explained
The Republican proposal to require people to work in order to receive Medicaid benefits poses an existential question about the very nature of government assistance: Do you need to do something to earn it? For years, the GOP’s answer has been yes, some people should. These days, they have very specific people in mind: The 19 million Americans, most of them childless and nondisabled adults, who were not eligible for Medicaid until the Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility a decade ago. (Scott, 5/12)

Military.com: Troop Paychecks Could Be Delayed If US Defaults, Austin Warns
Paychecks for service members would be disrupted if the United States defaults on its debts, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Thursday. "What it would mean realistically for us is that we won't, in some cases, be able to pay our troops with any degree of predictability," Austin testified at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. "And that predictability is really, really important for us. But this would have a real impact on the pockets of our troops and our civilians." (Kheel, 5/11)

CNN: Debt Ceiling: These States Will Be Hit The Hardest If The Standoff Isn't Resolved 
As leaders in Washington fail to make progress on a debt ceiling deal, Moody’s Analytics is warning of disastrous implications for American jobs if the United States defaults on its debt for an extended period. ... While most states would be “hit hard” by a debt limit breach, the economic pain would vary from state to state, according to projections released on Wednesday by Moody’s. It would disproportionately hurt states with large concentrations of federal workers or that have a number of jobs that rely on government funding. That includes Washington, DC, and states located near or that rely on federal institutions such as national labs or military bases such as Alaska, Hawaii and New Mexico. (Egan, 5/11)

The New York Times: U.S. News Releases Its Latest, Disputed Rankings Of Law And Medical Schools 
U.S. News & World Report finally released its annual rankings of top law and medical schools on Thursday, after boycotts by those institutions, disputes over methodology, and a delay of weeks. A few law schools shuffled positions, but the ones at the top of the new list were familiar — Stanford, Yale, Chicago, Duke, Harvard and New York University. Yale, which was the first to boycott, retained its No. 1 position, though in a tie this year with Stanford. Columbia, which also participated in the boycott, dropped to eighth place from fourth. (Saul, 5/11)

Los Angeles Times: COVID-19 Emergency Is Over, But Virus Is Still Here
After three long and difficult years, the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ends Thursday. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus emergency was over globally the week before, and earlier this year California ended its pandemic state of emergency. But make no mistake: The emergency response may have ended, but COVID-19 is still with us. The virus that has officially killed about 7 million people worldwide (and very likely many more unofficially), and more than 1.1 million people in the United States, is still sickening thousands every day. (The Times Editorial Board, 5/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Border Patrol Must Treat Mothers, Families Better 
On this Mother’s Day, Customs and Border Protection should develop a clear policy to protect migrants who are pregnant, postpartum and/or nursing. It should prioritize their access to medical care by minimizing the amount of time they and their families are under CBP custody. (Pedro Rios, 5/10)

Mercury News and East Bay Times: California Must Get Ahead Of The Deadly Fentanyl Epidemic
California needs a multi-prong attack on the rapidly escalating fentanyl scourge devastating families across the state. (5/6)

CalMatters: California Schools Turn To The Courts To Fight Social Media 
A California teenager committed suicide in her bedroom after watching disturbing videos of a simulated hanging. Another teen in the Bay Area refused to eat and was hospitalized due to an eating disorder. An 8-year-old girl in Temple, Texas, died of self-strangulation. The reason parents gave for these unspeakable tragedies: social media use. (Julie Lynem, 5/11)

Modesto Bee: A Humane Path To Keeping The Mentally Ill From Homelessness Or Prison
Despite decades of effort, California is still far from creating an effective approach to treating severely mentally ill citizens, many of whom are homeless and desperately subsisting on our streets. (5/9)

CalMatters: How A Right To Housing Could Alleviate California Crisis
Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s historic commitment to ending California’s housing crisis – and the administration’s arm-twisting to try to make local jurisdictions do the right thing – we have not made the progress that Californians need. Forty percent of the state’s households now spend more on housing than they can afford, and California is home to more than half of the nation’s unsheltered people. (Michael Tubbs, 5/10)

Fresno Bee: Sex Trafficking Is Rampant In California. This Bill Would Make It A 'Three-Strikes' Crime
Senate Bill 14 is co-sponsored by Sen. Anna Caballero of Merced and Susan Rubio of East Los Angeles, both Democrats. That the bill is bipartisan in sponsorship is important: Democrats have a supermajority in the Senate and can push GOP-sponsored bills off to the side without a second thought. Getting Democrat support gives a Republican’s bill a fighting chance of consideration. (5/9)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Here's Why Postpartum Care Is Essential 
I have been lucky to take part in the development of San Diego County’s first postpartum heart health clinic to address this specific need for the women in our community. The Postpartum Heart Health Clinic at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa has a multidisciplinary team of providers and nurses focused on caring for mothers who developed a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy. (Chelsea Brauns, 5/10)