Los Angeles Times: Killing Obamacare's Coverage Mandate Will Cut Enrollment But Leave California's Marketplace Stable, Study Says
California's individual health insurance market will probably see a sharp drop in enrollment but should remain stable after Congress eliminated the requirement for individuals to carry coverage, a Harvard-led study published Thursday found. The federal tax reform act in December removed the individual mandate and the financial penalties that consumers faced under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, starting in 2019. (Cosgrove, 3/1)

The Sacramento Bee: 1 In 5 Californians Would Skip On Health Insurance Without Tax Penalty, Survey Finds
One in five equates to roughly 378,000 state residents, said Dr. John Hsu, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and perhaps not surprisingly, many in that group were people expected to use the health care system least because of their good health. The problem is that no one has a crystal ball, said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, the state health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act. That act also provided that many taxpayers would receive a credit if they signed up for insurance or a penalty if they did not. (Anderson, 3/2)

KQED: To Screen Or Not To Screen? Doctors Debate Post Partum Depression Testing
Lawmakers will begin debate next week on a bill that would require doctors to screen new moms for mental health problems – once while they’re pregnant and again, after giving birth. But a lot of doctors don’t like the idea. Many obstetricians and pediatricians are afraid to screen new moms for depression and anxiety. “What are you going to do with those people who screen positive?” said Laura Sirott, an OB/GYN who practices in Pasadena. “Some providers have nowhere to send them.” (Dembosky, 3/5)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: State Audit: Counties Hoarding Money For Mental Health Programs 
Counties throughout the state are holding onto millions of dollars intended for mental health services, a recently released state audit has found. The audit is forgiving of San Diego County, which was found to allocate funds appropriately and monitor projects effectively, although it also was sitting on about $185 million at the time of the study. The money comes from Proposition 63, a 2004 initiative known as the Mental Health Services Act, which placed a 1 percent income tax on state residents who earned $1 million or more annually. (Warth, 3/3)

In other mental health news —

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Mental Health Collaborative Tackles Fire-Related Trauma In Sonoma County
When a North Bay fire survivor walks into her private practice office, Santa Rosa psychologist Alisa Liguori Stratton never presumes to know exactly what they’re going through. Liguori Stratton, who lost the Fountaingrove home where she and her family lived, has a pretty good idea of the type of post-fire trauma many are suffering, whether they lost a home or not. But the experience — the 15 minutes she and her family had to flee their home, the loss of everything they own — is not a type of cheat sheet that informs her practice. (Espinoza, 3/4)

The Desert Sun: Palm Springs' Desert Regional Grapples With Earthquake Compliance
Across the state, more than 70 percent of hospital buildings are already compliant with seismic standards, even stronger structural requirements don’t go into effect until 2030. Other hospitals are on their way, with a clear, confident path to compliance some time in the 12 years before the deadline. The future is not so clear at Desert Regional Medical Center. The hospital is fully compliant under the law today. But in 2030, the hospital will need to meet a higher standard. At the Palm Springs trauma center, which sits within miles of the simmering San Andreas Fault, more than one-third of the acute care hospital beds are in older buildings that will not be able to contain those beds unless they are upgraded by that date. Earthquake upgrades have been discussed for more than a decade, but the work has been delayed before. (DiPierro, 3/1)

In other hospital news —

Ventura County Star: Fire-Closed Psych Hospital Could Open As Soon As May
Closed because of damage from the Thomas Fire, Vista del Mar psychiatric hospital could reopen as soon as May, officials said Thursday. The private facility’s 87 beds closed on Dec. 5, the day after the fire spread to Ventura’s hillsides and destroyed two of five buildings. The staff and 67 patients evacuated in a last-minute, late-night convoy of vans and other vehicles as palm trees surrounding the campus burst into flames. (Kisken, 3/1)

Ventura County Star: Senior Concerns Gives Caregivers In Conejo A Day To Themselves
Jennifer Weir was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a year before her mother had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body. “I was her caregiver," Weir said. "She couldn’t care for herself.” She could feed herself, and she could communicate, Weir said, but that was about it. So for five years, Weir’s mother lived with Weir and her family in their Thousand Oaks home. Weir's mother died in December, two weeks after her 90th birthday. (Doyle, 3/4)

The New York Times: Wounds From Military-Style Rifles? ‘A Ghastly Thing To See’
Perhaps no one knows the devastating wounds inflicted by assault-style rifles better than the trauma surgeons who struggle to repair them. The doctors say they are haunted by their experiences confronting injuries so dire they struggle to find words to describe them. At a high school in Parkland, Fla., 17 people were recently killed with just such a weapon — a semiautomatic AR-15. It was legal there for Nikolas Cruz, 19, the suspect in the shooting, to buy a civilian version of the military’s standard rifle, while he would have had to be 21 to buy a less powerful and accurate handgun. (Kolata and Chivers, 3/4)

In other national health care news —

The New York Times: Suit Calls Navy Board Biased Against Veterans With PTSD
Things got ugly for Cpl. Tyson Manker in Iraq. During a firefight in the confusion of the 2003 invasion, the 21-year-old Marine shot up a bus full of civilians. Later, during a chase, he dropped an Iraqi in a flowing white robe with a shot to the torso, only to discover afterward that he had hit a teenage girl. His squad beat detainees, and accidentally shot several other civilians. After his deployment, Corporal Manker was kicked out of the Marine Corps with an other-than-honorable discharge — not for anything that happened in combat, but for smoking marijuana to try to quiet his nerves when he got home. (Philipps, 3/2)

The New York Times: As Trump Pushes Medicaid Testing, The Grading Falls Short
The Trump administration is hoping to transform Medicaid by allowing states to test work requirements, premiums and other conservative policies, but a new government report says federal and state officials do not properly evaluate whether such experiments improve patient care or reduce costs. Evaluations “generally lacked rigor,” and the findings were often kept secret for years, so they were of little use to policymakers, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, said in the report issued last month. (Pear, 3/4)

The Hill: CDC: Worst Of Flu Season May Be Over 
The worst of the nation’s flu season may be over, according to new data from federal officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday said the 2017–2018 flu season peaked in early February and is now on the decline. While 45 states plus Puerto Rico continued to report widespread flu activity, that number is down compared to past weeks, the CDC said Friday. (Weixel, 3/2)

NPR: U.S. Immigration Policy Threatens Shake-Up In Home Health Aide Business
On a rare rainy night in Albuquerque, two dozen students are learning the proper way to care for older people. Teacher Liliana Reyes is reviewing the systems of the body — circulatory, respiratory and so on — to prepare them for an upcoming exam. These students are seeking to join a workforce of about 3 million people who help older adults remain in their homes. They assist these clients with things like bathing, dressing, and taking medication on time. (Jaffe, 3/5)

The Washington Post: Sexting Is Becoming Common For Teens
haring sexually explicit photos, videos or messages — or sexting — seems to be increasingly common among teens today. About 27 percent of teens say they’ve received such an electronic message, or sext, according to a study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics that included more than 110,000 teens. Nearly 15 percent admitted to having sent a sext. About 12 percent also said they had forwarded a sext without permission. (Searing, 3/3)

The Washington Post: Exercise Pill Could Someday Help Those Incapable Of Working Out
Not everyone can exercise. People with muscle-wasting diseases and movement disorders, the frail, the very obese and post-surgical patients are among those who face a significant challenge when it comes to working out. This can be frustrating, considering the well-established benefits of exercise. But what if a drug could stimulate the body into producing some of the same effects of exercise — more endurance and weight control, for example — without the need to run a single step? Such a pill may be on the way. Several scientists are testing compounds that apparently can do this — and people wouldn’t even have to move at all to benefit. (Cimons, 3/4)

NPR: Personal Health Technology Is Getting Smarter
With sensors that can collect data on body movements, heart rate, blood pressure and other metrics, the list of health trackers that go beyond activity trackers like Fitbits gets longer each year. "There's definitely an explosion of these things," says Dr. Joseph Kvedar, the vice president for connected health at Partners HealthCare in Boston, and an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School. (Chen, 3/5)