Los Angeles Times: Two Top Candidates For California Governor Have Been Touting Their Healthcare Wins. Here's What They Really Did
Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa are depicting themselves as Democratic healthcare visionaries as they campaign to become California’s next governor. To prove his healthcare mettle, Newsom points to Healthy San Francisco, a first-of-its-kind universal system adopted while he reigned as the city’s mayor in 2006. Newsom’s work on the program helped him land an endorsement from the influential California Nurses Association, and a boast or two will surely punctuate his speech at their convention on Friday as hyper-partisan politics intensify over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and implement a national single-payer plan. (Willon, 9/22)

Los Angeles Times: The Push For Single-Payer Health Care Just Went National. What Does That Mean For The California Effort?
When Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders visited Beverly Hills last May, he made a full-throated appeal for California to “lead the country” and pass a pending state proposal to establish single-payer health care. On Friday, he’ll return here for a San Francisco speech trumpeting his own higher-stakes plan — a bill to drastically overhaul the nation’s health-care system by covering everyone through Medicare. (Mason, 9/22)

KQED: In The Battle Against Hepatitis C, The VA Takes The Lead
The VA has implemented an aggressive effort to screen and treat all veterans under their care for the virus. Hepatitis C experts and advocates have praised the VA for its proactive approach, and say it should be a model for other government health programs, and even private insurers. (Klivans, 9/2!)

In other news —

KQED: This Vietnam Paratrooper Was Exposed To Agent Orange – Today He Lives With Parkinson’s
The effects of Agent Orange can take years to show up. While scientists still don’t know the exact mechanisms of how it acts, exposure has been implicated in the progression of several diseases, including a number of cancers, Parkinson’s, heart disease and diabetes, which Buckley also has. (Arcuni, 9/21)

The Mercury News: Santa Cruz Brain Surgeon Faces $15 Million Bail Amid New Charges In Child Rape Case
A sex tape with 3-year-old and 10-year-old boys, and a 5-year-old girl, generated 32 additional molestation charges for a Santa Cruz brain surgeon, Watsonville nurse and Tucson, Arizona, mother suspected of a national sex ring seeking taboo families, according to court documents and a bail hearing Thursday. (Todd, 9/22)

In other news from the courts —

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Siblings Win Right To Sue The City Over Police Shooting Of Joseph Mann 
The sisters and brothers of a man killed by Sacramento police won a pivotal federal court ruling this week that potentially expands who can legally sue in the aftermath of police shootings and opens a window on more information about the controversial incident. (Chabria, 9/22)

Ventura County Star: Simi Valley Doctor Sentenced To Jail For Selling Oxycodone
William Lee Matzner, 58, was also sentenced to five years of probation and 250 hours of community service, according to the Ventura County District Attorney's Office. (Diskin, 9/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Moving Toward Opening Nation’s 1st Safe Injection Clinic 
San Francisco political leaders have been steadily coming around to the idea of opening safe injection centers where addicts could shoot drugs in a controlled situation instead of outside on the sidewalk. And now, it seems, they won’t let state or federal law get in their way. (Swan, 9/22)

In other news from across the state —

The Press Democrat: Sonoma County Law Enforcement And People With Autism Gather To Teach Each Other
For people diagnosed with autism, the basic elements of an emergency situation, from the startling nature of a patrol car’s lights and sirens to a police officer’s commanding voice, are circumstances that can cause great distress. “It’s a two-way education,” said Lt. David House, an organizer of the program and administrator with the Sonoma County Jail whose autistic son, Isa, 21, was on hand. (Johnson, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times: Multiple Cases Of West Nile Virus In Glendale Prompt Education Campaign
With eight cases of West Nile virus reported in Glendale so far this year, health officials took part in a door-to-door education campaign Wednesday, informing residents of what they can do to protect themselves from infection. Conducted by the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District, the effort informed residents in Glendale, Los Feliz and Atwater Village about the preventive measures they can take to reduce the risk of being bitten by mosquitoes. Levy Sun, a spokesman for vector control, said wearing insect repellent and dumping out any stagnant water near homes are measures people should take regularly. (Nguyen, 9/21)

The New York Times: Aaron Hernandez Found To Have Severe C.T.E.
The brain scan came as a surprise even to researchers who for years have been studying the relationship between brain disease and deaths of professional football players. Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end and a convicted murderer, was 27 when he committed suicide in April. Yet a posthumous examination of his brain showed he had such a severe form of the degenerative brain disease C.T.E. that the damage was akin to that of players well into their 60s. (Belson, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times: Disgraced Ex-Patriots Player Aaron Hernandez Found To Have CTE And Early Brain Atrophy
In an announcement Thursday, Boston University’s CTE Center said doctors diagnosed Hernandez with Stage 3 CTE. Stage 4 is the most serious. Both stages, usually found in much older former players, are associated with aggressiveness, impulsivity, depression and memory loss. The effort, led by Dr. Ann McKee, also found he had “early brain atrophy” and “large perforations” on a central membrane in his brain. (Fenno, 9/21)

In other news —

San Francisco Chronicle: How California Puts High School Athletes At Great Risk
According to a recent study published in the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine and conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to minimizing preventable death on the playing field, California ranks second to last in the nation — ahead of only Colorado — when it comes to implementing policies that help prevent the leading causes of sudden death in high school athletes. (Saracevic, 9/21)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Insulin Resistance Cause Found, Reversed In Animal Study
San Diego scientists say they've discovered a cause of insulin resistance — a hallmark of type 2 diabetes — and reversed it in mice. If the study is confirmed in people, it will answer a longstanding question about how insulin resistance arises. (Fikes, 9/21)

In other public health news —

Los Angeles Times: UC Irvine To Debut Brain Research Center With Advanced MRI Machine
UC Irvine’s Campus Center for Neuroimaging will have a grand opening next month for its new research center that aims to make breakthroughs in human brain research. The centerpiece of the center — dubbed FIBRE, or Facility for Imaging & Brain Research — is a $3-million Siemens Prisma 3T magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine noted for its technology that collects higher-quality images in a shorter time. It came to UCI with help from Siemens and the National Institutes of Health. (Zint, 9/21)

KQED: Microplastics For Dinner 
If shellfish are on the menu, chances are microplastics are, too. ... A study last year found that wastewater treatment plants were discharging 7,000,000 particles each day into San Francisco Bay. (Fiore, 9/21)

The New York Times: Latest Obamacare Repeal Effort Is Most Far-Reaching
For decades, Republicans have dreamed of taking some of the vast sums the federal government spends on health care entitlements and handing the money over to states to use as they saw best. Now, in an 11th-hour effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the party has come up with a way to repackage the funding for the law it loathes into a trillion-dollar pot of state grants. The plan is at the core of the bill that Senate Republican leaders have vowed to bring to a vote next week. It was initially seen as a long-shot effort by Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy. But for all its ad hoc, last-minute feel, it has evolved into the most far-reaching repeal proposal of all. (Zernike, Abelson and Goodnough, 9/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Q&A: How The Graham-Cassidy Plan Would Change Health Coverage
The Graham-Cassidy bill would lump together the money spent on two ACA programs to expand health coverage: subsidies for private insurance and an expansion of the Medicaid program. That funding would be redistributed as block grants to states that could use it to fashion their own health systems. All of the bill’s health spending would end in 2027 and need to be reauthorized by Congress. The bill also makes structural changes to Medicaid by capping how much federal money states can get. A similar proposal, contained in the Republicans’ last effort to repeal parts of the ACA, would have resulted in 15 million people losing health coverage in a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (Hackman, 9/21)

The New York Times: The G.O.P. Bill Forces States To Build Health Systems From Scratch. That’s Hard.
In 2003, health care policy makers in Massachusetts agreed that the state should build a system to expand coverage to its uninsured residents. It took four years before Romneycare was fully up and running. In between, politicians had to think hard about how they wanted the system to work: how money would be raised and spent, what benefits would be offered, whether and how markets should be used to distribute coverage, whether people who didn’t buy coverage should be penalized. (Sanger-Katz, 9/21)

The Washington Post: How Many With Preexisting Conditions Would Be Priced Out Of Coverage Under Cassidy-Graham?
The easiest way to understand the debate over preexisting conditions in health-care coverage — a debate fueled this week by Jimmy Kimmel’s repeated disparagement of the new Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare — is to look at the Obamacare website. As of writing, Healthcare.gov explains what protections the Affordable Care Act provides to those with conditions that, before the bill’s passage, may have resulted in denial of coverage or sharply increased premiums. (Bump, 9/21)

NPR: Latest Senate Health Bill Would Cut Funds To Blue States
Senate Republicans' latest plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system ends with a massive shift of federal money from states that expanded Medicaid — and are largely dominated by Democrats — to those that refused to expand. Several analyses of the bill show the pattern. (Kodjak, 9/21)

Politico: Last-Ditch Obamacare Repeal Bill Has ‘Worst Elements’ Of Earlier Plans
The last-ditch Obamacare repeal bill has almost every divisive proposal that doomed previous bills. The big difference: a Sept. 30 deadline to use a rule that allows Senate Republicans to pass a measure with just 50 votes. (Demko, 9/21)

The Washington Post: Federal Estimate Shows Big Win-Loss Gap Among States Under Cassidy-Graham Bill
An internal analysis by the Trump administration concludes that 31 states would lose federal money for health coverage under Senate Republicans’ latest effort to abolish much of the Affordable Care Act, with the politically critical state of Alaska facing a 38 percent cut in 2026. The report, produced by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, focuses on the final year of a block grant that states would receive under the Cassidy-Graham legislation. It shows that government funding for such health insurance would be 9 percent lower overall in 2026 under the plan than under current law. (Goldstein and Eilperin, 9/22)

Politico: Trump Publicly Backs Healthcare Effort, Privately Harbors Doubts
In public, President Donald Trump is all-in on the Senate’s final chance to repeal Obamacare. But privately, there’s ambivalence in the White House about the bill’s contents and its chances of clearing the tightly divided chamber next week. Trump spent time between meetings at the United Nations calling senators and other senior White House officials about the Graham-Cassidy bill, asking for updated vote tallies and how to woo senators for the bill. White House officials have considered tweaking the state funding to win a vote from GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — and others. Trump has also publicly excoriated Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for voting against the legislation, telling aides he would go after other senators. (Dawsey and Everett, 9/22)

Los Angeles Times: Ads Target California's GOP House Members On New Healthcare Bill But It's Not Clear Who's Paying For Them
Five of California's House Republicans are being featured in new digital ads urging them to oppose the so-called Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill to roll back Obamacare. But the newly formed group that's running the ads isn't saying where it's getting the money for them. (Mai-Duc, 9/21)

The Hill: CNN To Host Health-Care Debate With ObamaCare Repeal Sponsors
CNN will host a town hall-style debate Monday night where senators will face off over the new ObamaCare repeal bill. The network announced that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), opponents of the bill, will debate its co-sponsors, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). (Concha and Sullivan, 9/21)

The New York Times: Jimmy Kimmel Accused A Senator Of Lying About His Health Care Bill. Who’s Right?
Jimmy Kimmel, the talk show host who has become the unlikely face of opposition to Senate Republicans’ latest health care push, insisted he had done his homework. Mr. Kimmel spent a second straight night arguing against the proposal on Wednesday. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a co-sponsor of the bill, responded by telling news outlets that “Jimmy doesn’t understand.” (Qiu and Victor, 9/21)

The Associated Press Fact Check: Kimmel’s Take On Health Care Harder To Refute
Who’s right — President Donald Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy, or late-night host Jimmy Kimmel? None has really captured the complexity of the debate over who might lose insurance protections in the latest Republican health care bill. But of the three, the TV guy is the hardest to refute. Trump insists in a tweet that the bill covers pre-existing conditions, a point also made by Cassidy, a sponsor of the legislation. But there’s a catch. It allows states to get a waiver from “Obamacare” requirements that insurers charge the same to people with health problems as they do to healthy people. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 9/22)

The Associated Press: Jimmy Kimmel Transforms Debate, And Shows Comedy's New Role
If the latest Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare doesn't work, it may become known as the Jimmy Kimmel Non-Law. The comic's withering attacks this week have transformed the debate over the bill (sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy) and, in the process, illustrated how thoroughly late-night talk shows have changed and become homes for potent points of view. (Bauder, 9/21)

Politico: Kimmel Tells Viewers: ‘We Have Until Sept. 30’ To Stop GOP Health Bill
Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday said it’s not his job to talk about health care — but he’s doing it anyway, until Senate Republicans’ last-ditch bill to repeal Obamacare is stopped. “I should not be the guy you go to for information on health care,” the late-night TV host said on Thursday’s show. “And if these guys … would tell the truth for a change, I wouldn’t have to.” (Diamond, 9/21)

Politico: Price Traveled By Private Plane At Least 24 Times
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has taken at least 24 flights on private charter planes at taxpayers’ expense since early May, according to people with knowledge of his travel plans and a review of HHS documents. The frequency of the trips underscores how private travel has become the norm — rather than the exception — for the Georgia Republican during his tenure atop the federal health agency, which began in February. The cost of the trips identified by POLITICO exceeds $300,000, according to a review of federal contracts and similar trip itineraries. (Pradhan and Diamond, 9/21)

The Washington Post: How Tom Price Decided Chartered, Private Jets Were A Good Use Of Taxpayer Money
After Tom Price was sworn in as health and human services secretary, the Georgia Republican faced an inconvenience known to millions of Americans: His flight was delayed, an aide said, and he was forced to spend hours at an airport. The delay left Price a no-show at an early public appearance his office helped plan. Price knew well the pain of flying to and from Washington as a member of Congress for 12 years. But now he was the head of a trillion-dollar federal agency and one of President Trump’s point men to fulfill the campaign promise of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Flight delays and no-shows would not do. (Davis, 9/22)

Sacramento Bee: GOP Health Plan Hurts 6.7 Million Californians. Why?
A new UC Berkeley study projects that 6.7 million Californians could lose coverage under Graham-Cassidy in 2027. This could include 1.5 million children, seniors and people with disabilities who rely on Medi-Cal, as California would face excruciating choices on Medi-Cal eligibility. (Sandra Hernandez, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times: The Disastrous Impact Of The GOP's Obamacare Repeal Plan, In Three Devastating Charts
The healthcare consulting firm Avalere on Wednesday released the latest in a series of independent analyses of Senate Republicans’ new effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The findings are beyond ugly. They show devastating cuts in healthcare funding for adults, children and the disabled — in effect, almost every population category in the U.S. other than seniors enrolled in Medicare. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/20)

Los Angeles Times: Graham-Cassidy: Another Day, Another Lousy GOP Healthcare Bill 
The latest proposal — by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — suffers from the same fundamental problems as all of its predecessors. Aiming to lower insurance costs for the healthy, it would allow states to herd people with preexisting conditions or potentially expensive risks — say, women who might want maternity coverage — into insurance gulags with egregiously high premiums. (9/21)

Orange County Register: Latest Health Care Bill Is Too Hasty, Risky 
Republicans in Congress have not given up on altering our health care system, and the White House is prepared to go along for the ride. Unfortunately, the new bill, led by Reps. Bill Cassidy, R.-La., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is too hasty and too risky to merit support. (9/21)

Los Angeles Times: Sen. Cassidy's Obamacare Repeal Bill Gets Blasted By The Health Secretary Of His Home State
Senate Republicans are preparing to vote on their last-gasp Affordable Care Act repeal bill without estimates from the Congressional Budget Office of its effects on the deficit, health insurance coverage, or premiums. So someone else has to step in to inform the senators of the measure’s grim consequences. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: Obamacare Alternatives Fall Short
The enduring frustration with the ACA — much of it properly directed at the costly, creaky and often cruel system it incrementally improved — is understandable. But the critics’ efforts to undo it keep unintentionally underscoring its centrist pragmatism compared with the alternatives. (9/18)

Los Angeles Times: Believe It Or Not, Graham-Cassidy Socializes The Cost Of Health Insurance
There are plenty of things wrong with the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposal to overhaul Obamacare (and Medicaid, while it’s at it), from its cockamamie approach to helping people not insured by their employers to its blithe indifference to the rising cost of medical care. But give sponsoring Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) credit for doing something remarkable: They got even the most conservative of their Republican colleagues to agree to socialize more of the cost of health insurance. (Jon Healey, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times: Repeal And Replace Is Back, And Scarier Than Ever
Like the villain in a slasher movie, Senate Republicans keep coming for the health insurance of tens of millions of Americans. After Sen. John McCain’s dramatic “no” vote seemed to finish off this year’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a proposal by two senators with mostly unearned reputations for moderation — Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — represents the latest threat to the many people who gained access to healthcare under President Obama. The scariest part is that it might just pass. (Scott Lemieux, 9/19)

Los Angeles Times: The GOP's Last-Ditch Obamacare Repeal Bill May Be The Worst One Yet
The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is back, a zombie again on the march weeks after it was declared dead. The newest incarnation is Cassidy-Graham, named after chief sponsors Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Compared with its predecessors, the bill would increase the ranks of America’s medically uninsured more — by millions of people — cost state governments billions more and pave the way for the elimination of all protection for those with preexisting medical conditions. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/18)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Vaping Debate: Are Health Officials Deceiving Us For Our Own Good?
Even with new federal rules meant to discourage “vaping” taking effect last month, the battle over “e-cigarettes” in the United States just keeps building. More than 9 million Americans regularly use vaping devices in which they apply heat to a liquid — sometimes but not always including nicotine — to create small plumes of vapor that they inhale. So are “e-cigarettes” just part of the continuum of dangerous ways to ingest nicotine and other harmful chemicals in tobacco, and thus a public health nightmare? (Chris Reed, 9/21)

Los Angeles Times: There Are 3 Types Of Single-Payer 'concern Trolls' — And They All Want To Undermine Universal Healthcare
Some of the naysayers are conservatives who simply abhor “big government.” Some have perfectly valid reasons to question the merits of single payer in general or Sanders’ methods in particular. Yet others claim they support universal healthcare in theory (one day, perhaps) but cannot do so now because of a “concern.” They are “concern trolls” — broadly defined as “a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion.” (Adam H. Johnson, 9/21)

San Jose Mercury News: Sanders’ Medicare For All Bill Comes Up Short; Show Us The Money
Bernie Sanders talks big, but the record shows that in his 25 years in Congress he has failed to deliver on any of his ideological proposals. Expect the same from the independent Vermont senator’s ambitious Medicare for all plan. It’s impossible to take his single-payer plan seriously because it fails to address the single biggest issue: how to pay for it. (9/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: A Growing Movement For Single-Payer Health Care
From a candidate who famously declared that single payer will “never ever come to pass” and branded it as offering everyone “a pony” to legislation — Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Senate Bill 1804, co-sponsored by a third of Senate Democrats, and Rep. John Conyers’ House Resolution 676 by half of House Democrats. What happened? A huge shift toward participatory democracy, with millions of people participating in rewriting what is possible and necessary for their lives. (RoseAnn DeMoro, 9/18)

Los Angeles Times: Does Bernie Sanders' Single-Payer Plan Have A Shot?
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, unveiled last week, is an ambitious and (to many) enticing idea: a single, government-run health plan with generous benefits for everyone — just like most industrialized countries have enjoyed for decades. If only it were feasible in today’s United States. (Doyle McManus, 9/17)

Los Angeles Times: Are Democratic And Republican Healthcare Proposals Really Equally 'Extreme'?
Will the real moderate party please stand up? On the same day that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced his “Medicare for All” healthcare plan, Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) introduced a last ditch effort to sorta-kinda repeal and replace Obamacare. Despite having zero chance of being passed any time soon, Sanders’ bill grabbed the limelight for two reasons. (Jonah Goldberg, 9/19)

Orange County Register: Lack Of Health Care Access A Gateway To Homelessness 
Over the next week, the U.S. Senate will consider whether to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the so-called Graham-Cassidy solution. To be clear, there are some aspects of the Affordable Care Act that are troublesome for working Americans, such as the so-called Cadillac tax on employer-sponsored health care plans. But this bill is not the answer. (Jennifer Muir Beuthin, 9/22)