Los Angeles Times: California Lawmakers Back Bill To Protect Workers' Reproductive Health Choices Over Opposition From Religious Groups
Employees would not risk losing their jobs for reproductive health choices, including having an abortion, in-vitro fertilization or a child out of wedlock, under a bill that passed the Legislature on Thursday. The measure, by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), takes aim at employer codes of conduct, particularly at religious institutions, that could cost workers their jobs for making such health decisions. (Mason, 9/14)

In other news from Sacramento —

Capital Public Radio: Why Barbers Could Have A Role In Preventing Domestic Abuse 
A bill that just passed through the California Legislature — AB326 from Democratic Assemblyman Rudy Salas — would mandate sexual assault and domestic violence training for beauticians in California. The training would be given to aspiring salon professionals when they apply for a license. (Caiola, 9/14)

Capital Public Radio: California Lawmaker Asking Gov. Brown To Declare Emergency Over Illicit Pot Grows 
A California state lawmaker is calling on Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency in Siskiyou County due [to] rampant illegal marijuana grows. ... Besides exhausting local law enforcement resources, Gaines said the large scale pot growers in the county that touches the Oregon border are stealing water and damaging the environment. (Sandsor, 9/14)

Sacramento Bee: Gavin Newsom Leads 2018 California Governor's Race 
California voters say jobs and the economy, health care, crime and immigration policies are among their most pressing concerns heading into a year in which they will elect a replacement for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. (Cadelago, 9/14)

KPBS: San Diego Study: California Kids With An Autistic Older Sibling Are Less Likely To Be Vaccinated 
San Diego researchers are out with a new study that finds California kids are less likely to be vaccinated if they have an older sibling with autism. Published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the analysis of more than 200 Southern California families reveals that only 83 percent of infants with an autistic older sibling are vaccinated, compared with 97 percent of infants in general. (Wagner, 9/14)

Orange County Register: Molina Healthcare Laying Off Workers 
Molina Healthcare is following through with layoffs announced earlier this summer, the company said, with some employees leaving the company Thursday, Sept. 14. It was not immediately clear how many people in Long Beach or elsewhere were affected. (Edwards, 9/14)

In other news from across the state —

Fresno Bee: Fresno Children Receive Free Dental Care 
If you or your child are age 20 or younger, live in Fresno County and are on Medi-Cal, free dental care could be in your future. Free Denti-Cal Youth Services is a program that focuses on high-value care and improved access for children who receive Medi-Cal assistance, all part of an effort to improve dental health that includes preventative work. The program was developed through a collaboration between the county Department of Public Health, Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission and Reading and Beyond. It is funded through the Dental Transformation Initiative. (Johnson, 9/14)

The Associated Press: Analysts See Trump Threats To Insurers Boosting Premiums
Average premiums for individually purchased health insurance will grow around 15 percent next year, largely because of marketplace nervousness over whether President Donald Trump will block federal subsidies to insurers, Congress' nonpartisan fiscal analyst projected Thursday. The Congressional Budget Office estimate comes as Trump has repeatedly threatened to halt the payments in his drive to dismember President Barack Obama's health care law. (Fram, 9/14)

And in other health law news —

The Washington Post: HHS Slashes Funding To Groups Helping ACA Consumers Enroll By Up To 92 Percent
Health and Human Services officials have informed grass-roots groups that assist with enrollment under the Affordable Care Act that their funding will be reduced by as much as 92 percent, a move that could upend outreach efforts across the country. The groups, which fund organizations known as “navigators,” had been braced for the cuts since the Trump administration announced two weeks ago that it would shrink overall program funding by 41 percent and slash the department’s ACA advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million. At the time of the announcement, HHS officials said the outreach wasted taxpayers’ money. (Eilperin and Goldstein, 9/14)

The Hill: Trump Cuts To ObamaCare Outreach To Hit Red States Most 
The Trump administration’s decision to slash outreach funding for ObamaCare will, perhaps unintentionally, hit red states the hardest. The move last month to cut 90 percent of funds to spur signups for healthcare.gov is likely to lead to fewer young and healthy people in the insurance pool — and thus higher costs in states with majority Trump voters, according to experts. (Weixel, 9/15)

The Washington Post: How Health-Care Reform Affected America, In 51 Graphs
Last year, 8.6 percent of Americans lacked health insurance. Three years earlier, that figure was 14.5 percent, meaning that the rate dropped by 5.9 percentage points over the period that the Affordable Care Act went into effect, a 40 percent decline from the 2013 figure. In real terms, that’s about 19 million fewer people lacking health insurance, per estimates released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. (Bump, 9/14)

The Hill: Senate Health Panel Aims For Deal On Stabilizing Markets Early Next Week 
The Senate's health panel intends to craft a bipartisan bill to stabilize the insurance markets by early next week, enabling the full Senate to pass it by the end of the month, according to Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Alexander laid out the goal Thursday during the Health Committee’s fourth hearing on stabilizing the markets ahead of a Sept. 27 deadline for insurers to sign contracts to sell plans on HealthCare.gov, with open enrollment beginning Nov. 1. Last week, Alexander said he’d hoped for a deal by the end of this week. (Roubein, 9/14)

The New York Times: ‘Medicare For All’: Is It Popular? And Is It The Same As Britain’s System?
As leading Democrats embrace Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposal to vastly expand Medicare to cover all Americans, Republicans are fighting back with familiar critiques of such a single-payer system. Mr. Sanders argued for his “Medicare for all” legislation in an Op-Ed published in The New York Times on Wednesday, while his Republican colleagues dismissed the idea in a news conference. Here’s an assessment of their claims. (Qiu, 9/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Single-Payer Health Care Could Be A Tough Sell, Polling Shows
Single-payer health care, or as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) calls it, “Medicare for all,” is becoming a rallying cry for many Democrats in Congress. But are Americans behind the idea of mandatory government-provided insurance? Polling from the summer tells us that it could be a tough sell. Only 33% of the overall public supports a “single payer” approach to health care, according to the Pew Research Center’s June poll. Among Democrats and those who lean Democrat, Pew says 52% support single-payer, up from 33% in March 2014. (Jamerson, 9/14)

The Hill: Senator Asks For CBO Score Of Sanders's Single-Payer Bill
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is asking congressional scorekeepers to analyze the cost of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) “Medicare for all” bill, which could fuel Republican attacks that a single-payer health-care system would bankrupt the country. In a letter to the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Barrasso — the Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman — wrote he was “deeply concerned that Senator Sanders’ Medicare-for-All legislation is not only a government takeover of health care, but would also put financial burdens on the American people that they cannot sustain.” (Roubein, 9/14)

The New York Times: Google Sets Limits On Addiction Treatment Ads, Citing Safety
As drug addiction soars in the United States, a booming business of rehab centers has sprung up to treat the problem. And when drug addicts and their families search for help, they often turn to Google. But prosecutors and health advocates have warned that many online searches are leading addicts to click on ads for rehab centers that are unfit to help them or, in some cases, endangering their lives. (Corkery, 9/14)

In other national health care news —

The New York Times: Are You A Hair-Twirler, Nail-Biter Or Knuckle-Cracker?
Are you a toe-tapper, hair-twirler, eye-blinker, head-nodder, nail-biter, knuckle-cracker, skin-picker, lip-licker, shoulder-shrugger or a chin-stroker? Call it a nervous habit or tic, almost everybody has at least one — whether they are aware of it or not. Tics exist on a spectrum ranging from barely noticeable to extremely annoying to potentially injurious. (Murphy, 9/14)

The New York Times: New Product Is First To Claim It May Reduce Peanut Allergies
A new powdered peanut product is the first food item allowed to claim it may reduce peanut allergies in infants, though parents of susceptible babies are urged to consult a doctor before trying it. The product, called Hello, Peanut, can be mixed into puréed baby food to expose infants to peanuts starting around five months old. (Rabin, 9/14)

The New York Times: Alcohol Abuse Is Rising Among Older Adults
In the summer, Henry Wrenn-Meleck likes to sit on the stoop of his building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, observing the passing urban parade. One day in late July, “one of my neighbors could see something was wrong,” he recently recalled. “I was sort of rolling around, obviously in a lot of pain. He said, ‘I have to call 911,’ and he did.” (Span, 9/14)

The Washington Post: Selena Gomez’s Kidney Transplant: Young, Minority Women Disproportionately Affected By Lupus
In the world of celebrities, there are diseases such as HIV/AIDS and breast cancer that are very “popular” and well understood, thanks to years of fundraising and awareness campaigns by stars. And there are those diseases that are less so. Lupus, an autoimmune disorder that can damage organs, is in the second category. When Selena Gomez shocked her 126 million Instagram followers on Thursday by revealing that she had disappeared from the public eye this summer because she was getting a kidney transplant because of lupus, her fans had many questions. (Cha, 9/14)

Stat: End-Of-Life Decisions Can Be Difficult. This Doctor Thinks ‘Nudges’ Can Help
For tax payments, “nudges” have helped municipalities increase revenues and decrease collection-related costs. For energy consumption, “nudges” have helped homeowners save money and utilities preserve capacity. But in health care, the technique has been slower to catch on. First described by the pioneering economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (who is also a legal scholar), a “nudge” is a way of framing a set of choices to essentially steer people toward a particular option without shutting out other options. (Tedeschi, 9/14)

Los Angeles Times: The Great Medi-Cal Paper Waste
Remember the telephone book? That giant, multi-thousand-page behemoth that used to land on your doorstep once a year? Well, neither do we, barely. The heyday of the phone book is long gone, and yet communications with friends and businesses is easier than it’s ever been before. Can it be that California officials haven’t noticed that? A new federal rule that took effect in July allows health insurance plans to stop automatically printing and mailing lengthy Medi-Cal provider directories, some of which are the size of phone books, to all new enrollees and make the information available digitally. Anyone without online access or who preferred having a hard copy could still request one. (9/12)

Los Angeles Times: Making Sense Of Covered California And Medicare During Open Enrollment
It’s that time of year when we all have to start thinking about health insurance plans and options. Not only do I need to figure out if my current plan will be offered again next year, and with what changes, but my husband is over 65, so I also have to research the latest Medicare plans as well. As a columnist, research is my thing, but this insurance stuff makes my head spin. (Barbara Venezia, 9/13)

Sacramento Bee/Bloomberg: Is This The Bedside Miracle That Health Reform Needs?
Health-care reform is like one of those ill people in a Victorian novel. They are pronounced close to death, with no possibility of a cure and then they linger on for hundreds of pages of breathless plotting, while the reader wonders: “Is this it? Could they possibly live after all that suffering?” (Megan McArdle, 9/13)

Los Angeles Times: A Legal Spat Between Pharmaceutical Companies Defines What's Wrong With Our Drug Regulations
Lawsuits in the pharmaceutical industry are as common as TV ads promoting wonder drugs, never mind the horrific side effects relegated to a breathless, fast-talking voice over at the end. Typically, however, the plaintiffs in these lawsuits accuse the defendants of patent infringement. (The defendants typically strike back by claiming the patents should never have been issued in the first place.) (Michael Hiltzik, 9/12)

Sacramento Bee: One Lesson From Hurricanes: Better Evacuations
As Hurricane Irma churned toward Florida, I was talking last week with a Californian who has multiple relatives in southwestern Florida. But a couple of the man’s grown sons hadn’t evacuated. Why not? “Well, the kids are in school.” (Karin Klein, 9/12)

Orange County Register: Leadership Needed On Riverbed Homeless
The explosion of homelessness on the Santa Ana River Trail — a responsibility of the County of Orange by agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers — is a disgrace, and nothing short of a complete failure of leadership by the sheriff and whoever is running day-to-day operations.A responsible leader would simply say, “The Santa Ana River Trail is the responsibility of the county. As the primary law enforcement agency responsible for the county, from this day forward, we will be taking responsibility for this asset from fence line to fence line.” (David Harrington, 9/10)

Orange County Register: A Plan For Housing And Public Safety
Anaheim residents, businesses, visitors and those across Southern California are watching an escalating homeless crisis dramatically affect neighborhoods, parks and other public recreation areas. Elected officials and county and city staff are hearing from residents and advocates alike from all over the region. And those voices are growing louder. (Kris Murray, 9/10)

Los Angeles Times: Prostate Cancer: Patience And Prevention
For more than a decade, we’ve known that prostate cancer is over-diagnosed and over-treated, putting men at risk of incontinence and sexual dysfunction to remove what might have been a slow-growing, non-lethal cancer. When active surveillance of prostate cancer was first proposed over a decade ago, men weren’t racing to be the first to try it. Active surveillance is the careful monitoring of cancer for signs of progression. Unlike lung, breast and colon cancer, there are indolent forms of prostate cancer that do not require surgery or radiation. (Jeffrey Yoshida, 9/13)

Orange County Register: Let Legal Marijuana Put The Black Market Out Of Business
Santa Ana is apparently done playing marijuana whack-a-mole with illegally operating dispensaries, as its strong-arm policing has failed to dislodge the last few operators, while also causing some embarrassment to the city. “Based on nuisance conditions, city council members have authorized the filing and prosecution of receivership actions against four owners of illegal marijuana dispensaries — including a shop subject to a controversial raid — as a first step toward permanently shutting them down,” the Register reported. (9/14)

Sacramento Bee: California Not Ready For Health Impact Of Legal Cannabis
California’s next public health crisis is four months away. On Jan. 1, 2018, thanks to the passage last year of Proposition 64, the 24 million adults who live in the Golden State will be able to legally consume recreational marijuana – a massive market compared with the 1.5 million or so current users of medical marijuana in California. And though that may sound like one big party waiting to happen, buyer beware. (Brad Rowe, 9/13)

Modesto Bee: Dementia In Ex-Athletes Shows Game Must Change
Football isn’t the only game with problems, but it’s the one we Americans love most. As a collision sport, football is inherently more dangerous than most, but any contact sport may result in brain traumas. (Gerald Haslam, 9/15)