KQED: California Lawmakers Call For Better Conditions At Immigration Detention Facilities 
A growing chorus of U.S. lawmakers from California are calling for better safety standards and investigations into facilities that hold immigrant detainees. ...Earlier this year, inspectors found dirty, moldy facilities at the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange County and rotten meat being served to detainees. (Pickoff-White, 12/15)

San Jose Mercury News: California Activists Applaud New Cell Phone Safety Advisory
California’s new cell-phone safety guidelines for adults and children are being welcomed by the public health, environmental and First Amendment advocates who successfully sued the state to release guidelines that had been languishing since 2009. In fact, the lawsuit’s plaintiff, Joel Moskowitz, said the new advisory goes “well beyond what any federal health agency has published on this issue.’’ (Seipel and Lochner, 12/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: Radiation Typical Of Cell Phones And Wi-Fi Linked To High Rate Of Miscarriages
A study of hundreds of pregnant women in the Bay Area found that those who were more exposed to the type of radiation produced by cell phones, wireless networks and power lines — radiation that grows more and more common — were nearly three times as likely to miscarry. The Kaiser Permanente study, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, did not show definitively what was causing the higher rate of pregnancy loss, nor did it isolate the potential impact of cell phones or other producers of electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. (Haigney, 12/17)

Orange County Register: Detox Can End In Death At Some ‘Non-Medical’ Southern California Rehabs
Many believe centers like Above It All — which says on its website that it provides “clinically supervised” and “around-the-clock medical supervision” for patients in detox and aftercare — are medical facilities. Few know that detox typically happens in tract houses, or that the most stringent medical requirement might be the full-time presence of someone who knows CPR. (Sforza, 12/17)

In other public health news —

Los Angeles Times: Santa Ana Winds Help Clear The Smoke From The Thomas Fire, But Health Risks Remain
Raging Santa Ana winds helped clear smoke from the massive Thomas fire out of Ventura County on Sunday, but health officials cautioned residents that "non-smoky" conditions don't mean the air is safe to breathe. The winds "will cause dust particulate to stir up, resulting in air quality that is at times unhealthy," according to an advisory from the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. (Poston, 12/17)

The Desert Sun: Football's Toll On Wayne Hawkins: Dementia, Money, Memories
The story of the 79-year-old Rancho Mirage resident is an all-too-familiar one for former and current football players these days. Years of battling in the football trenches, taking blows to the head, ignoring injuries and hard hits in a desire to get back on the field, have taken their toll on [Wayne] Hawkins' body and his brain. And now the money to provide him the constant care he needs is running out. ...By 2006, doctors provided a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s, but that was later changed to traumatic brain injury and dementia. By 2012, as one of five former players in a UCLA study, doctors said Hawkins’ brain functions and P.E.T. scans were consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease found in the brains of many former NFL players whose brains are examined after they die. (Bohannan, 12/15)

Los Angeles Times: California Officials Say Housing Next To Freeways Is A Health Risk — But They Fund It Anyway
It’s the type of project Los Angeles desperately needs in a housing crisis: low-cost apartments for seniors, all of them veterans, many of them homeless. There’s just one downside. Wedged next to an offramp, the four-story building will stand 200 feet from the 5 Freeway. State officials have for years warned against building homes within 500 feet of freeways, where people suffer higher rates of asthma, heart disease, cancer and other health problems linked to car and truck pollution. Yet they’re helping build the 96-unit complex, providing $11.1 million in climate change funds from California’s cap-and-trade program. (Barboza and Zahniser, 12/17)

In other news from across the state —

East Bay Times: Share The Spirit: Man Gets Legal Help Securing Healthcare
All his son did was fill out a change-of-address form. But it could have killed Michael Titus. The 69-year-old Oakland resident has end-stage renal disease and needs kidney dialysis three times a week to stay alive. For years, the East Bay native had gotten that through his Kaiser Medicare Advantage plan at the Satellite Healthcare clinic in Oakland. ...After receiving a change-of-address notice and thinking that its patient had moved out of the area, Kaiser discontinued his coverage, Titus said. ...That could have been a disastrous bit of news. But Bob Gibney, a volunteer with Legal Assistance for Seniors’ Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program, stepped in to help Titus sort through the mess. (Deruy, 12/18)

Modesto Bee: Weed Dispensary To Sprout In Riverbank 
Eighteen residents pleaded Tuesday with the Riverbank City Council to find a location other than 2213 Patterson Road, on a stretch between Galaxy Theatres and McDonalds, or to ban cannabis sales altogether. ...Former city officials also showed up to argue against the application of Pacafi Cooperative, short for Patient Care First with a Modesto business address, according to weedmaps.com. (Stapley, 12/13)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Jury Convicts Beverly Hills Doctor In Kickback, Insurance Fraud Scheme 
A San Diego federal jury this week convicted a Beverly Hills radiologist for his role in a massive fraud scheme that involved kickbacks for patient referrals so he could bill insurance companies more than $25 million in unnecessary medical services. Dr. Ronald Grusd operated California Imaging Network Medical Group, with practices throughout the state, including San Diego, Calexico, Fresno, Santa Ana and Los Angeles. (Davis, 12/15)

The New York Times: A Last Push For Obamacare Sign-Ups — And Worries About Who Got Hurt
Denise English was one of just two employees working six days a week to handle the crowd of people signing up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act at a neighborhood health clinic here, as the Friday deadline for open enrollment loomed. Most of the people who sat waiting wanted to speak to her co-worker, who speaks Spanish. But Ms. English — she speaks only “un poquito” — was doing her best, her phone open to Google Translate, as she tried to help clients like Ana Gonzalez and Celso Morales, who moved here from Puerto Rico in April, sign up for a subsidized health plan. (Zernike and Pear, 12/15)

The Associated Press: Sign-Ups Show Health Law's Staying Power In Trump Era
A deadline burst of sign-ups after a tumultuous year for the Obama health law has revealed continued demand for the program's subsidized individual health plans. But the Affordable Care Act's troubles aren't over. On the plus side for the overhaul, official numbers showed a sizable share of first-time customers, 36 percent, were among those rushing to finish HealthCare.gov applications in the run-up to Friday's enrollment deadline. One new challenge comes from the GOP tax bill, which repeals the law's requirement that people have health insurance or risk fines. (12/18)

Politico: How Blue States Might Save Obamacare's Markets
The looming demise of Obamacare’s individual mandate is spurring talks in a handful of blue states about enacting their own coverage requirements, as state officials and health care advocates fear repeal will roil their insurance markets. Republicans in Congress are poised to kill off the individual mandate in their sweeping tax overhaul, knocking out one of Obamacare's most unpopular features — but one that health experts have said is essential to making the law's insurance marketplaces function. (Pradhan, 12/17)

In other national health care news —

The New York Times: Uproar Over Purported Ban At C.D.C. Of Words Like ‘Fetus’
The Department of Health and Human Services tried to play down on Saturday a report that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been barred from using seven words or phrases, including “science-based,” “fetus,” “transgender” and “vulnerable,” in agency budget documents. “The assertion that H.H.S. has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” an agency spokesman, Matt Lloyd, said in an email. “H.H.S. will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. H.H.S. also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.” (Kaplan and McNeil, 12/16)

Stat: After Report On CDC's Forbidden Words Draws Outrage, HHS Pushes Back
A spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department said Saturday the agency remains committed to the use of outcomes data and scientific evidence in its decisions, pushing back on the characterization of a Washington Post report that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now banned from using words like “science-based” and “transgender” in budget documents. The spokesman, Matt Lloyd, didn’t respond to follow-up questions about whether the policy might apply more broadly, now or in the future, to other HHS agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the National Institutes of Health. (Mershon, 12/16)

The Washington Post: ‘We Feel Like Our System Was Hijacked’: DEA Agents Say A Huge Opioid Case Ended In A Whimper
After two years of painstaking investigation, David Schiller and the rest of the Drug Enforcement Administration team he supervised were ready to move on the biggest opioid distribution case in U.S. history. The team, based out of the DEA’s Denver field division, had been examining the operations of the nation’s largest drug company, McKesson Corp. By 2014, investigators said they could show that the company had failed to report suspicious orders involving millions of highly addictive painkillers sent to drugstores from Sacramento, Calif., to Lakeland, Fla. Some of those went to corrupt pharmacies that supplied drug rings. (Bernstein and Higham, 12/17)

The Washington Post: New Drug Law Makes It ‘Harder For Us To Do Our Jobs,’ Former DEA Officials Say
A new law supported by opioid distributors and manufacturers is making it increasingly difficult to hold companies accountable when they run afoul of the nation’s drug laws, according to recently retired Drug Enforcement Administration investigators on the front lines of the war against opioids. They join a chorus of voices — including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 44 state attorneys general and the head of the DEA office that regulates pharmaceuticals — who are calling for changes to the law. (Higham and Bernstein, 12/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Prosecutors Treat Opioid Overdoses As Homicides, Snagging Friends, Relatives
After Daniel Eckhardt’s corpse was found on the side of a road in Hamilton County, Ohio, last year, police determined he died of a heroin overdose. Not long ago, law enforcement’s involvement would have ended there. But amid a national opioid-addiction crisis fueling an unprecedented wave of overdose deaths, the investigation was just beginning. Detectives interrogated witnesses and obtained search warrants in an effort to hold someone accountable for Mr. Eckhardt’s death. The prosecutor for Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati and its suburbs, charged three of Mr. Eckhardt’s companions, including his ex-wife and her boyfriend, with crimes including involuntary manslaughter, an offense carrying a maximum prison sentence of 11 years. (Walker, 12/17)

The New York Times: In Opioid Battle, Cherokee Want Their Day In Tribal Court
Cherokee children were disappearing. At weekly staff meetings, Todd Hembree, the attorney general of the Cherokee Nation, kept hearing about babies in opioid withdrawal and youngsters with addicted parents, all being removed from families. The crush on the foster care system was so great that the unthinkable had become inevitable: 70 percent of the Cherokee foster children in Oklahoma had to be placed in the homes of non-Indians. (Hoffman, 12/17)

The Associated Press: Huge Tax Bill Heads For Passage As GOP Senators Fall In Line
After weeks of quarrels, qualms and then eleventh-hour horse-trading, Republicans revealed the details of their huge national tax rewrite late Friday — along with announcements of support that all but guarantee approval to give President Donald Trump the Christmas legislative triumph he's been aching for. (12/15)

The Washington Post: Sen. Susan Collins Takes Huge Leap Of Faith With Tax Bill. Critics Say She’s Getting Played.
As GOP tax legislation nears final passage on Capitol Hill, Sen. Susan Collins is approaching the moment for a mighty leap of faith. The Maine Republican extracted key concessions in exchange for her support for the bill, including commitments from the Trump administration and Senate leaders to back two pieces of legislation pumping money into the health-care system. The problem is, House Republicans largely oppose the health-care bills. (Werner, 12/15)

The New York Times: The Winners And Losers In The Tax Bill
With the bill finally headed to a vote this coming week, taxpayers are scrambling to determine whether the legislation renders them winners or losers. ... With the repeal of the individual mandate, some people who currently buy health insurance because they are required by law to do so are expected to go without coverage. According to the Congressional Budget Office, healthier people are more likely to drop their insurance, leaving insurers stuck with more people who are older and ailing. This is expected to make average insurance premiums on the individual market go up by about 10 percent. All told, 13 million fewer Americans are projected to have health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (Drucker and Rappeport, 12/16)

Stat: Final Tax Bill Holds Much To Please Biopharma
The tax overhaul that Republicans hope to send to President Trump’s desk next week is expected to lighten the tax burden on the pharmaceutical industry and provide a number of other benefits that could help drug makers boost their bottom lines. The final version of the bill, released late Friday, retains a key tax credit aimed at incentivizing research into rare disease treatments — an improvement over an early draft that repealed it for the industry. The package will also lower the tax rate companies have to pay on earnings they stockpiled overseas, though the final rate is higher than in earlier drafts. (Mershon, 12/15)

The Associated Press: Judge Temporarily Blocks New Trump Rules On Birth Control
A federal judge in Philadelphia on Friday ordered the Trump administration not to enforce new rules that could significantly reduce women's access to free birth control. Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued the injunction, temporarily stopping the government from enforcing the policy change to former President Barack Obama's health care law. (12/15)

The New York Times: Court Temporarily Blocks Trump Order Against Contraceptive Coverage
In the lawsuit, filed by the State of Pennsylvania, the judge said the rules would cause irreparable harm because tens of thousands of women would lose contraceptive coverage. The Affordable Care Act contains no statutory language allowing federal agencies to create such “sweeping exemptions” to the law’s requirements to cover preventive services, Judge Beetlestone declared. (Pear, 12/15)