The North Bay Business Journal: Kaiser, NorthBay Health Open Urgent Care Clinics In Napa, Sonoma Counties
Two North Bay health systems have opened new urgent care clinics — one in Sonoma County, the other in Napa County. NorthBay Health on Sept. 9 opened an urgent care clinic in American Canyon, its first in Napa County, according to Fairfield-based NorthBay, in Solano County. (Sarfaty, 9/12)

Modern Healthcare: Kaiser, Humana, UnitedHealth Land Medicare Advantage Star Bonuses
The federal government will pay less in quality bonuses to Medicare Advantage insurers this year compared with last year, according to a new report. Medicare Advantage insurers will receive an estimated $11.8 billion in bonus payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this year linked to their star rating performance during the 2023 plan year, according to a report released by healthcare research institution KFF on Wednesday. That’s down about 8% from the total CMS distributed to health insurers last year. (Berryman, 9/12)

Modesto Bee: Board To Decide Fate Of Modesto Doctor Accused Of Misconduct
Allegations against a Modesto doctor have called attention to a state agency responsible for protecting patients. Last month, the Medical Board of California proposed disciplinary action against Dr. Robert Altman, the president of Gould Medical Group, over allegations of sexual exploitation and misconduct. (Carlson, 9/13)

Modern Healthcare: What California's AI Bills Mean For Digital Health Startups
Multiple bills in California targeting artificial intelligence could have significant implications for providers and digital health companies operating in and out of the state. The three bills, all of which passed the state's Assembly and Senate earlier this year, have not yet been signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The bills would require providers to disclose when AI is used for patient communication, instruct organizations to test models for bias and provide a structure on how developers may be held liable for harm. (Turner, 9/12)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital Safety, Quality Rebounds Post-Pandemic: AHA, Vizient
Health systems have a lower risk of patient mortality, fewer hospital acquired infections, and are performing more cancer screenings in 2024 than prior to the pandemic, according to a new report from the American Hospital Association and Vizient, a group purchasing and consulting organization. The study, which uses data from Vizient’s clinical database, found that acute care hospitals have made significant improvements on their safety and quality measure performance over the past several years — despite dealing with sicker, more complex patient populations. (Devereaux, 9/12)

Stat: 2025 Medicare Advantage Plans Analysis: Humana, Aetna, United Health
For years, health insurers battled to gain market share in the lucrative privatized Medicare program. Now, the opposite is true. Some of the companies say they designed their 2025 plans with an eye toward ditching members. (Bannow, 9/13)

Reuters: US Employers Expect Nearly 6% Spike In Health Insurance Costs In 2025, Mercer Says 
U.S. employers expect health insurance costs to rise an average 5.8% in 2025, largely due to increased cost of medical services as well as higher use, according to a survey released by consulting firm Mercer on Thursday. The year 2025 is projected to be the third consecutive year in which healthcare costs for employers rise by more than 5%. Costs increased an average 3% during the decade prior, the report said. In part, the higher cost of each medical service is driven by a continued shortage of healthcare workers, linked to providers raising prices, Mercer said. Spending on behavioral health and popular but pricey GLP-1 weight loss drugs are also contributors. (Niasse, 9/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: AIDS/LifeCycle To End Annual Fundraising Ride After 3 Decades
Officials with AIDS/LifeCycle announced Wednesday that next year’s bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles will be its last due to increasing production costs and a decline in ridership and fundraising. AIDS/LifeCycle ride is a week-long, 545-mile bike ride that benefits the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, both of which also produce the event. Since the first ride in 1994, hundreds of people have participated, raising more than $300 million for HIV/AIDS care, testing and prevention, officials said. (Flores, 9/12)

Los Angeles Blade: New Twice-A-Year HIV Prevention Drug Found Highly Effective
The U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences announced on Sept. 12 the findings of its most recent Phase 3 clinical trial for its twice-yearly injectable HIV prevention drug Lenacapavir show the drug is highly effective in preventing HIV infections, even more so than the current HIV prevention or PrEP drugs in the form of a pill taken once a day. There were just two cases of someone testing HIV positive among 2,180  participants in the drug study for the twice-yearly Lenacapavir, amounting to a 99.9 percent rate of effectiveness, the Gilead announcement says. (Chibbaro Jr., 9/13)

The Washington Post: FDA Approves Apple AirPods As Hearing Aids 
If you have mild to moderate hearing loss, your AirPods could soon function as hearing aids. The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it has approved a piece of software that will transform the latest model of Apple’s AirPods Pro earbuds into over-the-counter hearing aids. The company’s hearing aid feature will be pushed to eligible devices through a software update in the coming weeks, Apple said. The move, which comes two years after the FDA first approved over-the-counter hearing aids, could help more Americans with hearing loss start getting help, the FDA said in a statement. (Hunter, 9/12)

CNBC: Congressman Slams Meta Over Response About Illicit Drug Ads On Apps
A Republican congressman slammed Meta on Thursday over what the lawmaker called an inadequate response to concerns about illicit drug advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. (Vanian, 9/12)

Los Angeles Times: Pillows, Blankets Can Be Signs Of Illegal Camping In Santa Monica
A narrowly divided Santa Monica City Council voted this week to remove a section of its anti-camping ordinance that allowed people experiencing homelessness to use pillows, blankets and bedrolls while sleeping outdoors. In a 4-3 vote, the council reversed a step taken in 2022 to comply with a federal appeals court ruling that declared it unconstitutional to bar people from “protect[ing] themselves from the elements when there is no shelter space available.” The Supreme Court overturned that ruling three months ago. (Vives, 9/13)

Los Angeles Times: The Proposal To End Homelessness In Los Angeles For $20 Billion
It would cost $20.4 billion to end homelessness in Los Angeles in a decade, a price tag requiring local, state and federal governments to more than double their spending on the problem, according to a draft budget analysis from city housing officials. The money would produce 36,000 permanent housing units for homeless residents with chronic health needs and build or subsidize 25,000 additional apartments for very low-income residents. The proposal assumes the city maintains nearly 17,000 beds in shelters and other interim housing locations through 2029 before ramping down. (Dillon and Smith, 9/13)

inewsource: State Found More VVSD Licensing Problems In April
State officials moved to revoke the substance abuse treatment license of Veterans Village of San Diego because it found several new licensing violations during an inspection in April, according to a formal accusation filed last week. Those new findings violated the terms of a settlement agreement between the state and VVSD that was signed in March 2023, causing the organization’s license to be placed on probationary status. (Moran, 9/12)

KQED: At A San Francisco Shelter For Unhoused Families, Cooking Helps Heal Trauma
Buena Vista Horace Mann is a Spanish immersion school for students from kindergarten to 8th grade in San Francisco’s bustling Mission District. But by night, it transforms into something completely unique in the city: a homeless shelter for families with children enrolled in the school district. The shelter provides a hot meal, a shower and a place to sleep in the gym or auditorium. It was formed six years ago by some of the parents of the school who, during a particularly rainy winter, asked principal Claudia DeLarios Moran if they could sleep in the hallway or an empty classroom. (Nguyen, Cabrera-Lomelí, 9/13)

Sacramento Bee: Placer County Jury Hears Closing Arguments In First Fentanyl Murder Case To Go To Trial 
A Placer County jury heard closing arguments in court in a Roseville drug overdose death in the first fentanyl murder case to go to trial. (Ahumada, 9/13)

NPR: PFAS Filtered From Drinking Water In Orange County, Calif.
Yorba Linda is a small, sunny city southeast of Los Angeles. It’s perhaps best known for being the birthplace of President Richard Nixon. But in the past few years, Yorba Linda has picked up another distinction: It’s home to the nation’s largest per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) water treatment plant of its kind, according to the city. “This December will be [three] years we've been running, and we’re the largest PFAS treatment plant using resin,” says J. Wayne Miller, former board president at the Yorba Linda Water District, for whom the plant is named. (Huang, 9/12)

CapRadio: New Study Finds 65% Decrease In California’s Fine Particle Pollution Over 20 Years
A new study found a 65% decrease in California’s fine particle pollution from vehicles from 2000 to 2019. “This is a massive win for public health,” said Joshua Apte, a UC Berkeley researcher and an author of the report. Fine particle pollution — also called PM 2.5 — can come from a variety of sources, including wildfire smoke and the combustion of gasoline, oil and diesel. Inhaling it has been linked to respiratory problems, premature death and a host of other health issues. (Secaira, 9/13)

KVPR: Gas Stoves May Soon Come With A Tobacco-Style Health Warning Label In California
The next time you shop for a cooking stove, the gas versions might show a health warning label similar to those on tobacco products. Because a stove's blue flame releases air pollution into your kitchen, California lawmakers have passed a bill that would require such warning labels on gas stoves for sale in stores and online. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign the bill into law. (Brady, 9/13)

Voice of San Diego: Some SDUSD Students Still Dealing With Hot Classrooms
Taxpayers have voted to give San Diego Unified School District $11.5 billion over the last 16 years with the express purpose of bringing working air conditioning to every classroom in the district. But nearly two decades in, and hundreds of millions of dollars later, some students are still dealing with dangerous heat. This summer, several San Diego Unified schools were hit hard by high temperatures. Hoover students complained last month that some classrooms reached 100 degrees. Henry High, last week also dealt with soaring temperatures in classrooms. And at Garfield Elementary, a 9-year-old who was having trouble breathing due to the heat was taken to the hospital. (McWhinney and Huntsberry, 9/12)

Bay Area News Group: San Jose To Invest In Non-Police Mental Emergency Response Team
San Jose has struck a deal with Santa Clara County to add another urgent support team to the city, following through on its commitment to provide non-police response alternatives to mental health emergencies. (Patel, 9/13)

USA Today: Parenting May Be Hazardous To Your Health, Surgeon General Warns
The surgeon general has a new public health warning. And this time, the hazard isn’t tobacco or alcohol: it’s parenting. Two-fifths of parents say that on most days, “they are so stressed they cannot function,” the Office of the Surgeon General reports in an advisory titled Parents Under Pressure. Roughly half of parents term that stress “completely overwhelming.” Those dire findings anchor a 35-page report, released in late August, that posits parental stress as “an urgent public health issue.” (De Visé, 9/13)

Roll Call: Schumer Tees Up Second Vote On IVF 
The Senate is expected to take another vote on legislation next week that would expand access to and coverage of in vitro fertilization as Democrats look to pressure Republicans to take a stand on IVF policies former President Donald Trump has called for on the campaign trail. (Raman, 9/12)

Politico: Trump Sells Himself As A ‘Leader’ On IVF, Angering Some Republicans
Donald Trump pitched himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. His plans are angering swaths of the Republican Party. “Though we share his desire for Americans to have more babies, Trump’s plan to fund in vitro fertilization for all American women is in direct contradiction with that hope,” said Pro-Life Action League President Ann Scheidler. “Hundreds of thousands of embryos — each of them as fully human as you or me — are created and then destroyed or frozen in IVF procedures.” (Ollstein and Messerly, 9/12)

Capital & Main: Trump Criticizes Affordable Care Act As New Census Data Shows Record Low Number Of People Without Health Insurance
In Tuesday’s debate, former President Donald Trump criticized the Affordable Care Act, labeling it “lousy” and saying he’d like to replace it, though he admitted he only had “concepts of a plan” in mind. Newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey underscored the degree to which the now broadly popular legislation has helped people gain health insurance across the country. (Lindenfeld, 9/12)

The 19th: Disabled Activists Respond To Trump’s Debate Claim That He Saved Obamacare
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump’s administration and a Republican majority Congress attempted, repeatedly, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more colloquially known as Obamacare. But at the first presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Trump told a different story. (Luterman, 9/12)

The New York Times: The Campaign Issue That Isn’t: Health Care Reform 
Donald J. Trump tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Kamala Harris proposed a fundamental restructuring of U.S. health care in 2019, a move to a single- payer system. These bold ideas were no aberration. In nearly every major presidential race for decades, health care has been a central issue. Remember Bill Clinton’s (doomed) health reform plan? George W. Bush’s Medicare drug plan? Mitt Romney’s Medicare privatization proposal? Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for all? As you may have noticed, with less than two months until Election Day, big, prominent plans for health reform are nowhere to be seen. Even in an election that has been fairly light on policy proposals, health care’s absence is notable. (Sanger-Katz, 9/13)

Stat: Why These Health Tech Leaders Are Openly Backing Trump Or Harris
Silicon Valley startup founders and venture capital investors are picking a side in this year’s presidential race in a stark departure for an industry they say has historically discouraged political activism. (Ravindranath, 9/13)

Roll Call: Presidential Contenders Stay Mum, For Now, On Menthol Ban 
When former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris took the debate stage Tuesday, they briefly touched on reproductive rights, health insurance access and drug prices. Left unmentioned, however, was another divisive, though less high-profile public health issue: The fate of menthol cigarettes. (DeGroot, 9/12)

San Diego Union-Tribune: No On Prop. 34. It Sets A Bad Precedent And Seems Unconstitutional. 
Proposition 34 is nominally about making health care more efficient. It requires that some care providers in the state spend at least 98 percent of their net drug sale revenue on “direct patient care.” But it is more properly seen as a vengeful attempt funded by landlords, and supported by politicians who advocate for more housing, to get back at Michael Weinstein. The president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which runs HIV/AIDS clinics in 15 states, has used foundation funds to sponsor three state ballot measures supporting rent control. The latest is also on the November ballot — Proposition 33. (9/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Prop. O Prepares SF For Project 2025 Abortion Threats
Reproductive rights are easily the most hotly contested issue ahead in the November election. If former President Donald Trump is reelected, and he implements the recommendations of the arch-conservative Project 2025, some types of birth control would be banned, the government could begin surveilling pregnancies and federal laws permitting emergency abortions due to life-threatening situations would be overturned. If Trump can enact the most extreme idea, fetuses would be legally recognized as people, completely banning abortion nationwide. (Chronicle Editorial Board, 9/12)

Los Angeles Times: Will We Let Mpox Spread, Repeating Public Health Failures?
Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) is back in the news. As of early September, the World Health Organization has reported more than 5,000 laboratory-confirmed cases this year. Given the well-documented shortcomings of mpox surveillance, these numbers underestimate the true magnitude of the disease burden. The highest number of cases are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the current outbreak has expanded to several other countries in Africa. The first case outside that continent appeared in Sweden, in a patient who returned from Africa; it’s only a matter of time before a case shows up in the United States, although the extent of a potential U.S. outbreak is uncertain. (Saad B. Omer, 9/13)

East Bay Times: California's Bird Flu Poses Existential Threat In Nation's Largest Dairy State
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza was recently detected in three herds in the Central Valley. California is the nation’s largest dairy state, producing 20% of U.S. milk, so these infections pose a particular threat to both public health and food security in a country that has become heavily dependent on animal-based protein. This June, researchers detected H5 virus in San Francisco Bay Area wastewater. California was the only state with H5 wastewater detections, but no infected dairies have been reported — until now. (Crystal Heath, 9/12)

Los Angeles Times: It Shouldn’t Take A Judge To Make VA House Homeless Vets 
Since the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs drew up a plan to build 1,200 units of housing for homeless veterans on its West Los Angeles campus to settle a lawsuit, progress has been appallingly slow. Eight years later, just 233 are open and an additional 535 are under construction. (9/13)

Los Angeles Times: One Way To Help Seniors Combat Housing Insecurity And Loneliness
In the midst of L.A.’s housing crisis, one fact should be ringing alarm bells: Seniors are estimated to be the fastest-growing segment of California’s homeless population. The average monthly Social Security benefit of $1,907 doesn’t cover the typical monthly rent of a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. As America’s population ages and the cost of living continues to rise, the challenges faced by seniors on fixed incomes will likely worsen. (Avi Kapur, 9/10)

Times of San Diego: The Cost Of Over Regulation Leaves Little Room For Heat Protection
California wants to protect workers from sweltering conditions on the job. But its nightmarish regulatory framework is getting in the way. The Governor’s office recently fast-tracked new heat regulations from California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. Compliance will be costly for businesses — both big and small — but the end goal is noble. (Tom Manzo, 9/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: I Nearly Died From A Brain Injury. My Insurance Made My Recovery Worse
On March 4, 2016, I opened my eyes. A nurse in bright blue scrubs came into focus as she rushed to my bedside. “Who’s the president? What’s your name? Where are you?” she asked, removing her stethoscope from around her neck. “Barack Obama. Sierra. I’m at the hospital, but I don’t know why,” I said as I tried to sit up. My head was pounding. Every bone in my body ached. (Sierra Smith, 9/8)