San Jose Mercury News: California May Buck Congress With Its Own Health Insurance Requirement
With Congress ending the requirement that all Americans have health insurance, California leaders are preparing to counter that move by securing health care for as many residents as possible in a fortified state insurance exchange. State lawmakers say they will present a package of health-related proposals in the coming weeks, before a Feb. 16 deadline for new bill introductions. (Aguilera, 1/21)

In other news from Sacramento —

KPBS: Full Dental Benefits Restored For Adults On Medi-Cal 
Adults with Medi-Cal coverage can now get something they have had to do without: dental care. State lawmakers have fully restored Denti-Cal benefits as of Jan. 1. They were cut in 2009 during the depths of the recession, and only partially restored in 2014. The Department of Health Care Services says less than a quarter of adults on Medi-Cal saw a dentist within the last year. (Goldberg, 1/22)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Two Countries, One Insurance Plan: San Diego Workers Find Medical Care In Tijuana 
Although their jobs are in the United States, their health care is in Mexico. On this rainy January morning, the workers and their dependent family members have converged at an eight-story building just yards from the U.S. border. Patients come to SIMNSA for everything from dental care to medical tests to physical therapy to consultations with specialists—all covered under SIMNSA’S cross-border health plan. Nobody here is complaining about crossing the border; in fact, many of them prefer it this way. The co-pay for a doctor’s visit is typically $7, a fraction of what they would pay in the United States, and there are no out-of-pocket deductibles on the plan. Many are Baja California residents, or have family members on the plan who live in Mexico. (Dribble, 1/21)

In other news on health care coverage —

KPCC: In Deal With Unions, LAUSD Takes Small Step Toward Cutting Healthcare Costs 
Late Thursday night, L.A. Unified officials and representatives of the eight labor unions representing district employees took what they hope will be a first step toward curbing those costs — even if it's only a baby step. ... As part of that agreement, L.A. Unified would freeze the amount of money it pays each year — $1.1 billion — to fully cover the healthcare premiums of nearly 60,000 district employees, 36,000 retirees and more than 92,000 of their dependents. (Stokes, 1/19)

Los Angeles Times: Death Toll Jumps Sharply After California Experiences Its Worst Week Of The Flu Season
The death toll from influenza in California rose sharply on Friday, amid a brutal flu season that has spread across the nation. State health officials said that 32 people under 65 died last week of the flu, making it the deadliest week this season so far. In total, 74 people under age 65 have died of the flu since October, compared with 14 at the same time last year. (Karlamangla, 1/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Flu Deaths Rise To 74, A Huge Increase Over A Year Earlier
The number of Californians who have died from the flu has risen to 74 as of the second week of January — five times the number seen at this point last year, according to figures released by state health officials Friday. Thirty-two people younger than 65 died from influenza during the second week of January, more than double the 15 deaths from the previous week, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. (Ho, 1/19)

The Mercury News: California Flu Deaths Jump From 42 To 74; Greater Bay Area Reports 25 
“It is an unfortunate fact that every flu season is serious because many people, from children to parents and grandparents, can become very ill and some may die from the flu,” said Paul Leung, chief of the communicable disease programs at the Contra Costa Public Health Department. (Seipel, 1/19)

The Bakersfield Californian: County Public Health Officials Confirm Year's First Flu-Related Death For Someone Under 65 
Michelle Placencia didn't feel well Sunday night. Soon she had a fever and chills, and felt fatigued. She saw a doctor Tuesday. By late Wednesday morning, she was dead. County Public Health officials said Placencia, a 39-year-old real estate agent and mother of five, was the first confirmed flu-related death in the county this year, a grim reminder of the danger the illness poses even to those who are otherwise healthy. (Kotowski, 1/19)

Orange County Register: Quest For Sobriety Often Ends In Sexual Assault At Some Rehabs In Southern California 
Since 2015, state regulators have investigated and closed 78 complaints of alleged sexual misconduct at rehabs, according to the Department of Health Care Services, the state agency that now oversees the recovery industry. The Southern California News Group found that at least 32 sex crimes, including rape and sexual assault, were reported to police in recent years from a sampling of treatment facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. (Sforza and Saavedra, 1/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: CPMC To Shut Down Alzheimer’s Program; Residents Scramble For Alternatives
One of San Francisco’s only subsidized residential care centers for Alzheimer’s patients will shut down by the end of 2018, prompting worry among family members, caregivers and officials about the dwindling availability of affordable care for dementia patients in an aging city. (Ho, 1/21)

In other news from across the state —

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Old Downtown Escondido Hospital Development Deal In The Making? 
A developer who has invested in numerous North County projects is negotiating with Palomar Health to redevelop the old Palomar hospital site as a mixed-use residential/retail complex. Escondido Mayor Sam Abed said Encinitas-based Integral Communities is in talks with the hospital district to purchase the 14-acre property on the east side of Escondido’s downtown. (Jones, 1/20)

The New York Times: Open, Closed Or Something In Between: What A Shutdown Looks Like
The vast machinery of the federal government began grinding to a halt on Saturday morning, hours after the Senate failed to reach a funding deal. But like an aircraft carrier after its propellers stop turning, much of the bureaucracy will stay in motion for a while, and some essential services, like the armed forces, the post office and entitlement programs, will not stop working at all. ... While roughly half of the work force at the Department of Health and Human Services will be furloughed, the department said it would continue services that involve the safety of human life or the protection of property. Those include a suicide prevention hotline, patient care at the National Institutes of Health, and product recalls and other consumer protection services run by the Food and Drug Administration. (Landler, 1/20)

CQ: HHS Would Furlough Half Its Staff In A Shutdown
Roughly half the employees at the Department of Health and Human Services would be furloughed in the case of a partial government shutdown, according to a document outlining the department’s contingency staffing plans for the current fiscal year in the case of lapsed appropriations. (McIntire and Siddons, 1/19)

The Associated Press: How Shutdown Affects Key Parts Of Federal Government
Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents. States will continue to receive payments for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it. Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government's annual seasonal flu program. And CDC's ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced. (1/21)

Stat: Flu Response Will Be Maintained During Shutdown, Officials Say, Contrary To Previous Plan
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be able to continue its immediate response to seasonal influenza in the event the government shuts down, a senior administration official said Friday night on a call with reporters. “CDC will specifically be continuing their ongoing influenza surveillance,” the official said. “They’ll be collecting data reported by states, hospitals, [and] others and they’ll be reporting that critical information needed for state and local health authorities.” (Mershon, 1/19)

The New York Times: Shutdown Goes Into Monday As Senate Inches Toward Deal
Senators failed on Sunday to reach an agreement to end the government shutdown, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of federal employees would be furloughed Monday morning even as the outlines of a potential compromise came into focus. For much of the day, feverish work by a bipartisan group of senators offered a reason for cautious optimism that a deal could be reached soon. By Sunday night, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, moved to delay until noon Monday a procedural vote on a temporary spending bill — a signal that talks were progressing. (Fandos and Kaplan, 1/21)

Los Angeles Times: Congress Fails To Reach Deal On Ending Federal Shutdown, Pushes Vote To Monday
Hopes for a breakthrough grew after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Schumer, who had not spoken for a day, huddled briefly on the Senate floor and met later Sunday to consider the proposal for a three-week temporary funding bill brokered by a bipartisan group of senators. "The shutdown should stop today," McConnell said. "Let's step back from the brink, let's stop victimizing the American people and get back to work on their behalf." (Mascaro, 1/21)

The Washington Post: This Flu Season Keeps Getting Deadlier, And A Shutdown Will Make Things Worse
A bad flu season that has hit the entire continental United States has yet to peak and already has caused the deaths of more children than what normally would be expected at this time of the year, according to officials and the latest data released Friday. During the second week of January, more people sought care for flulike illnesses than at any comparable period in nearly a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weekly report shows. Ten children died in the week ending Jan. 13, bringing the total number of pediatric deaths this flu season to 30. More than 8,900 people have been hospitalized since the season started Oct. 1. (Sun, 1/19)

NPR: Who Will Carry The Blame For The Shutdown? Maybe No One
While a lot of furious negotiation has been going on behind the scenes on Capitol Hill to end a partial government shutdown, to voters and cable news viewers it may look like most of the work in Washington is going into pointing fingers. As the countdown to shutdown hit zero, an official White House statement called Democrats "obstructionist losers." (Seipel, 1/21)

Politico: The Religious Activists On The Rise Inside Trump's Health Department
A small cadre of politically prominent evangelicals inside the Department of Health and Human Services have spent months quietly planning how to weaken federal protections for abortion and transgender care — a strategy that's taking shape in a series of policy moves that took even their own staff by surprise. Those officials include Roger Severino, an anti-abortion lawyer who now runs the Office of Civil Rights and last week laid out new protections allowing health care workers with religious or moral objections to abortion and other procedures to opt out. Shannon Royce, the agency's key liaison with religious and grass-roots organizations, has also emerged as a pivotal player. (Diamond, 1/22)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: Deportation Fears Have Legal Immigrants Avoiding Health Care
The number of legal immigrants from Latin American nations who access public health services and enroll in federally subsidized insurance plans has dipped substantially since President Donald Trump took office, many of them fearing their information could be used to identify and deport relatives living in the U.S. illegally, according to health advocates across the country. (1/21)

The New York Times: Trump Tells Anti-Abortion Marchers ‘We Are With You All The Way’ And Shows It
In the daily din of scandal and turmoil that has dominated President Trump’s first year in office, it can be easily overlooked how transformative he has been in using his executive powers to curtail abortion rights. As thousands of anti-abortion marchers gathered on the National Mall in Washington in the annual March for Life on Friday, Mr. Trump ordered his administration to make it easier for states to cut off money for Planned Parenthood clinics that offer health care to low-income women. (Peters, 1/19)

The Wall Street Journal: How Hospitals’ Woes Are Making Health Lines Blur
Hospital chains are responding to continued health-care consolidation with some vertical integration of their own. It is the latest sign that traditional industry borders are starting to break down. Four large systems, comprising about 300 hospitals in total, said this week that they are banding together to create a nonprofit generic-drug company. The goal is to curb shortages of commonly used medicines in hospitals as well as to pre-empt financial damage from sudden price increases on them. (Grant, 1/19)

The New York Times: 1 Son, 4 Overdoses, 6 Hours
The first time Patrick Griffin overdosed one afternoon in May, he was still breathing when his father and sister found him on the floor around 1:30. When he came to, he was in a foul mood and began arguing with his father, who was fed up with his son’s heroin and fentanyl habit. Patrick, 34, feeling morose and nauseated, lashed out. He sliced a love seat with a knife, smashed a glass bowl, kicked and broke a side table and threatened to kill himself. Shortly after 3, he darted into the bathroom, where he shot up and overdosed again. He fell limp, turned blue and lost consciousness. His family called 911. Emergency medical workers revived him with Narcan, the antidote that reverses opioid overdoses. (Seelye, 1/21)

The Hill: HHS Extends Trump's Emergency Declaration For Opioids 
The Trump administration has extended the opioid public health emergency issued by President Trump, days before that declaration was set to expire. In October, President Trump announced in the White House’s East Room that he was declaring the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency. The move was without precedent, as such declarations had in the past been reserved for natural disasters and the outbreak of infectious diseases. (Roubein, 1/19)

The New York Times: Yes, People Really Are Eating Tide Pods. No, It’s Not Safe.
It seems every few weeks another challenge takes social media by storm. Some, like the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” promote a cause. Others, like the bottle-flipping craze, are benign. But then there are those fads that are ill-informed or, worse, dangerous. The latest, the “Tide pod challenge,” belongs in that category. It involves biting down on a brightly colored laundry detergent packet of any brand and spitting out or ingesting its contents, an act that poses serious health risks. (Chokshi, 1/20)

The Wall Street Journal: What If Children Should Be Spending More Time With Screens?
Imagine someone traveling through time to the days before the internet, regaling audiences with fantastical tales of a future in which children can access devices containing the sum of all human knowledge and which gain new powers daily to instruct, create and bring people together. Now imagine this time traveler describing the reactions of most parents to these devices—not celebration, but fear, guilt and anxiety over how much time their children spend with them. That’s where we are today. Parents are frequently admonished that the most important thing to do with iPhones, iPads and computers is limit children’s access to them. (Mims, 1/22)