Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
The Startlingly High Cost Of The ‘Free’ Flu Shot
Although many consumers pay nothing out of pocket for flu shots, insurers foot the bill. And those prices vary dramatically. (Phil Galewitz, )
Good morning! A San Francisco jury ruled against an anti-abortion rights activist in the fetal tissue case over secretly filmed videos from 2015. Read more on that below, but first, here are your top California health stories of the day.
California Mass Shooting Leaves Four Dead, More Wounded Only Days After Santa Clarita Attack: At least four men were killed and six others were wounded Sunday night in southeast Fresno when gunmen sneaked into a backyard party and opened fire on dozens of people watching football. It was the third mass shooting in California in less than a week. Fresno Police Deputy Chief Michael Reid said in a televised interview that three men were found dead in the backyard in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and a fourth man died at the hospital. All of those shot were men 25 to 30 years old. Six others are expected to survive and are recovering at the hospital, police said. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in San Francisco said in a tweet that they were responding to the shooting. Police were knocking on doors in the neighborhood, looking for surveillance cameras and witnesses that might help detectives piece together what happened, Dooley said. Read more from Joshua Tehee, Brianna Calix and Larry Valenzuela of the Fresno Bee, and Laura Newberry of the Los Angeles Times.
New Hospital In Stanford Opens With Pricey Cutting-Edge Tech, Promises To 'Reduce Burdens On Patients, Staff': Sunday marked the first day of operation for the new Stanford Hospital, a $2 billion, seven-story facility spilling over with the modern, clean, light-filled design ethos endemic to Silicon Valley, and the energy was palpable. The 824,000-square-foot facility includes 368 single-patient rooms, as opposed to the older facility’s double-occupancy rooms, as well as a 76-bay trauma center, and 20 modern operating rooms. The building is like a candy shop for a health-tech enthusiast: There’s a fleet of 23 self-driving robots, each about the size of a big office printer, designed to trek through the hallways at 2 miles an hour transporting heavy items like waste, linens, and gift store merchandise. There’s a food-truck-sized machine with 50,000 slots meant to dispense pills into single-dose packets. But many health-care experts worry that pricey technology in hospitals and clinics will accelerate the rise of costs over time, resulting in higher prices for payers that can get passed down to patients in the form of higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Read more from Joseph Geha of the Bay Area News Group and Rebecca Robbins of Stat.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
The Associated Press:
Planned Parenthood Awarded $2.3 Million For Secret Videos
A federal jury found Friday that an anti-abortion activist illegally secretly recorded workers at Planned Parenthood clinics and is liable for violating federal and state laws. The jury ordered him, the Center for Medical Progress and other parties to pay nearly $2.3 million in damages. The jury awarded $1 million in damages, but offenses under the federal Racketeer and Corrupt Organizations Act are considered acts of organized crime and penalties awarded for them are automatically tripled. (11/15)
Los Angeles Times:
Saugus High School Shooting: Clergy Struggle To Explain
Rabbi Mark Blazer said he talked to the students about the complexities of mental health and the need to reach out with compassion to those in pain. But, reflecting on it later, he observed that the issues that confounded the preteens “frankly are the same questions that we adults have.”In reeling, grief-stricken Santa Clarita this week, it often fell to clergy to try to explain the seemingly unexplainable — the killing of two teenagers and wounding of three others by a classmate who then took his own life. (Ryan, 11/17)
KQED:
Some California Police Departments Don’t Review Deadly Uses Of Force
A new state transparency law, Senate Bill 1421, that’s opened internal investigation documents for the first time in decades, is providing a key insight into the long-hidden world of California policing: Not all agencies review how their officers acted — and whether they violated department policies — when they kill or badly injure someone. (Lewis and Peele, 11/17)
The New York Times:
Fearing A Mass Shooting, Police Took His Guns. A Judge Gave Them Back.
The authorities in the Seattle area came across an alarming photo on social media at the beginning of October. It showed a man holding two AK-47-style rifles. The caption above read: “one ticket for joker please.” With only a couple of days left before the opening of the “Joker” movie, law enforcement agencies scrambled to assess the threat level of the message. As detectives waded through the man’s online history, they encountered additional troubling posts: Charels Donnelly, 23, talked about threatening his mother with a gun and described fantasies about hurting women. (Baker, 11/18)
The Wall Street Journal:
California Faces Risk Of More Blackouts And Fires This Week
The National Weather Service issued high-level fire warnings for Southern California on Sunday, while PG&E Corp. warned of more power outages in Northern California where high winds and dry conditions also posed a fire risk. PG&E, California’s largest power company, said it might cut electricity starting Wednesday for roughly 180,000 homes and businesses around San Jose, Santa Rosa, and in the Sierra Foothills. All have already experienced preventive blackouts intended to reduce the danger of winds damaging power lines and igniting fires. (McWhirter and Carlton, 11/17)
Sacramento Bee:
PG&E Shutoff Update For CA: 250,000 May Lose Power In Outages
The embattled utility says its emergency operations center may turn off power in portions of 19 counties in the Sierra Nevada foothills, northern Sacramento Valley and the North Bay around Sonoma and Napa counties. Other parts of the Bay Area are not expected to be included in the so-called PSPS, or public safety power shutoff, the company said. (Moleski, 11/17)
CalMatters:
California Wildfire Alerts And Evacuations Still Ad Hoc
When a fast-moving wildfire marched toward the town of Paradise more than a year ago, few who lived there were aware of it. Even though the community used the CodeRED automated emergency warning system, less than 40% of residents subscribed to the alerts. Only 7,000 of the 52,000 residents who eventually evacuated received the emergency alert to leave.The fire incinerated cell towers and communications equipment, revealing a vulnerability of the telephone-based disaster alert system. “The only notification systems left were emergency vehicle sirens and bull horns… word-of-mouth with families and neighbors… and immediate action,” the Butte County Grand Jury reported to the Superior Court earlier this year. (Cart, 11/15)
Los Angeles Times:
Area Hospital Celebrates 100th 'Life Changing' Heart Procedure
Before the early 2010s, when the technology arrived in the United States, Wood would have faced open-heart surgery or, likely, death. Those diagnosed with aortic stenosis have a 50% chance of dying within two years if left untreated, according to Dr. Amir Sadrzadeh Rafie, a cardiologist at Adventist. (Seidman, 11/15)
Sacramento Bee:
Hundreds Say Farewell To Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson In Oakland
Nabrissa Valovage followed Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson’s post on LinkedIn as a graduate student in public health, and so much of it resonated with her that she applied for and landed a job with the health care giant a few months ago. Tyson, 60, died unexpectedly Nov. 10. His family will say farewell in an invitation-only memorial service Monday, but on Sunday, they hosted a public visitation at the Rotunda in Oakland. (Anderson, 11/17)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Sex Abuse Allegations Surface At SF Facility For Troubled Children
The Edgewood Center for Children and Families, a long-standing San Francisco nonprofit serving vulnerable children and teens, is reeling in the wake of two incidents this year in which staff members allegedly sexually assaulted minors residing at the Sunset District facility. Both of the alleged assaults, separate incidents involving two staff members no longer with Edgewood, were reported by the alleged victims, one of whom was 14 years old. The Chronicle could not obtain information on the age of the second alleged victim because details about that incident remain confidential. (Fracassa, 11/18)
Capital Public Radio:
Sutter Health Pays $30 Million To Settle Whistleblower Lawsuit After Allegedly Paying Doctors For Patient Referrals
Sutter Health will pay more than $30 million to the federal government and a whistleblower to settle a lawsuit alleging the health system paid physicians to refer patients to their hospitals. The suit, filed by a whistleblower in 2014, was under seal until Thursday. The settled claims allege that between 2012 and 2014, Sutter issued nearly $2 million in illegal payments annually to the Sacramento Cardiovascular Surgeons Medical Group in exchange for physicians sending patients to Sutter for further procedures, rather than to other hospitals. (Caiola, 11/15)
Ventura County Star:
VCMC Recognized For Surgical Quality In International Assessment
Ventura County Medical Center has been recognized for surgical quality in an international assessment by the American College of Surgeons, officials announced recently. The public medical center in Ventura was one of 88 hospitals located in the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates cited in the organization's National Surgical Quality Improvement Program. The hospitals were honored for achieving "meritorious" outcomes in care of surgical patients last year. VCMC was recognized in a field of 592 eligible hospitals, officials said. (Wilson, 11/17)
KQED:
From Working In Tech To Homelessness: The Challenges Facing A Senior Veteran
A University of Pennsylvania study estimates the aging homeless population will triple by 2030. In 1990, only 11% of the nation’s homeless population was over the age of 50, today more than 50% are.A UC San Francisco study shows homeless people in their 50s face more geriatric conditions than those living in homes who are decades older. According to the study, nearly half of the growing population of unhoused seniors became homeless after they turned 50-years-old. (Hossaini, 11/17)
Reuters:
Democrat Warren Outlines Three-Year Path To 'Medicare For All'
White House hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Friday outlined how she would implement "Medicare for All" during her first term in office, including by passing new legislation in her first 100 days that would give all Americans the option of choosing the government health insurance plan. Warren's timeline envisions a progression that would initially retain many aspects of the current system, including employer-based private insurance, while slowly transferring Americans to the government's Medicare health insurance plan that covers individuals 65 and older. (11/15)
The New York Times:
Elizabeth Warren Vows To Expand Health Coverage In First 100 Days
The initial bill she would seek to pass if elected would be a step short of the broader Medicare for all plan she has championed. But it would substantially expand the reach and generosity of public health insurance, creating a government plan that would offer free coverage to all American children and people earning less than double the federal poverty rate, or about $50,000 for a family of four, and that could be purchased by other Americans who want it. Ms. Warren has long endorsed a Medicare for all bill sponsored by one of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But until now, she has not specified how quickly she would move to enact a health care plan. Friday’s proposal amounts to a detailed road map for eventually establishing Medicare for all, a single government-run health insurance program under which private coverage would be eliminated. (Goodnough, Kaplan and Sanger-Katz, 11/15)
The Associated Press:
Warren Pushes Back On Critics Of Her Health Care Plan
Elizabeth Warren pushed back against critics of her newly released plan to phase in implementation of a single-payer health care system, insisting Saturday that she is “fully committed” to Medicare for All and that she plans to first build on existing health care programs because “people need help right now.” “My commitment to Medicare for All is all the way,” Warren told reporters, responding to critics who’ve questioned the timing behind the release of her implementation plan. (11/16)
The New York Times:
Elizabeth Warren’s Backup Backup Health Plan
The Democratic presidential candidates have been fighting over whether they should try to replace the health insurance system with a single government-run plan or create a government-run plan that Americans could choose to join. But hidden outside this big debate is a harsh reality: If Democrats fail to retake control of the Senate, neither plan has much of a chance to become law. ... So what would Warren do? Her regulatory agenda can be divided into a few broad categories. But over all, she views executive authority in the same broad way that Trump does. Several of her proposals are likely to end up in court — as several of his have. (Sanger-Katz, 11/16)
The New York Times:
How Elizabeth Warren Got To ‘Yes’ On Medicare For All
Two days before Senator Elizabeth Warren rolled out a fundamental reimagining of America’s health care and tax system — a $20.5 trillion package that would dwarf all her previous plans combined — she was working the phones to personally preview her proposal and sell it to a select group of political influencers. One was Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, who had written skeptically days earlier that her plan to pay for “Medicare for all” was a “make-or-break moment” for her, if not the whole 2020 race. Another call was to Representative Pramila Jayapal, the lead sponsor of Medicare for all legislation in the House and a leading liberal as the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Pramila,” Ms. Warren told her, “we’re gonna do this.” (Goldmacher, Kliff and Kaplan, 11/17)
The New York Times:
Trump Retreats From Flavor Ban For E-Cigarettes
It was a swift and bold reaction to a growing public health crisis affecting teenagers. Seated in the Oval Office in September, President Trump said he was moving to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes as vaping among young people continued to rise. “We can’t have our kids be so affected,” Mr. Trump said. The first lady, Melania Trump, who rarely involves herself publicly with policy announcements in the White House, was there, too. “She’s got a son,” Mr. Trump noted, referring to their teenager, Barron. “She feels very strongly about it.” (Karni, Haberman and Kaplan, 11/17)
The New York Times:
Trump Went For A Medical Checkup That Was Not On His Public Schedule
President Trump underwent a two-hour doctor’s examination on Saturday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which the White House said was part of a routine annual physical and included lab work. The appointment was not on the president’s schedule, in contrast to a previous physical that Mr. Trump had in February, also at Walter Reed outside Washington. (Vigdor, 11/17)
The New York Times:
To Lower Costs, Trump To Force Hospitals To Reveal Price Of Care
The Trump administration on Friday announced it would begin forcing hospitals to publicly disclose the discounted prices they negotiate with insurance companies, a potentially bold move to help people shop for better deals on a range of medical services, from hip replacements to brain scans. “For decades, hospitals, insurance companies, lobbyists and special interests have hidden prices from consumers, so they could drive up costs for you, and you had no idea what was happening,” President Trump said Friday afternoon in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. “You’d get bills that were unbelievable and you’d have no idea why.” (Abelson, 11/15)
The Washington Post:
The Trump Administration’s Immigration Jails Are Packed, But Deportations Are Lower Than In Obama Era
It has been nearly 700 days since Bakhodir Madjitov was taken to prison in the United States. He has never been charged with a crime. Madjitov, a 38-year-old Uzbek national and father of three U.S. citizens, received a final deportation order after his applications to legally immigrate failed. He is one of the approximately 50,000 people jailed on any given day in the past year under the authority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the most foreigners held in immigration detention in U.S. history. (Hauslohner, 11/17)
The Associated Press:
Drug Cost Legislation Gets A Push From White House
The White House is ramping up its push to get a bill through Congress that curbs prescription drug costs, feeling a new urgency as the impeachment investigation advances amid the 2020 election campaign. The effort has progressed beyond anything seen in years, says President Donald Trump’s top domestic policy adviser. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront these issues in a nonideological fashion,” adviser Joe Grogan said in a recent session with reporters. (11/17)
The Associated Press:
Big Study Casts Doubt On Need For Many Heart Procedures
A large study finds that people with severe but stable heart disease from clogged arteries may have less chest pain if they get a procedure to improve blood flow rather than just giving medicines a chance to help, but it won't cut their risk of having a heart attack or dying over the next few years. (11/16)
The New York Times:
Whoops. Judge Reduces J&J Opioid Fine After Mistaking Thousands For Millions
In a mortifying mistake destined to be cited by gleeful math teachers everywhere, an Oklahoma judge acknowledged that he was three decimal places off — mistaking thousands for millions — when he originally calculated the amount Johnson & Johnson should pay for its role in the state’s opioids crisis. As a result, Judge Thad Balkman announced on Friday a new fine, reduced by about $107 million. The total is now $465 million, down from the $572 million he assessed in August. (Hoffman, 11/15)
The Washington Post:
Study Finds Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s World Mercury Project And Larry Cook’s Stop Mandatory Vaccinations Bought 54 Percent Of The Ads
The majority of Facebook advertisements spreading misinformation about vaccines were funded by two anti-vaccine groups, including one led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a study published this week. The World Mercury Project, headed by Kennedy, and a California-based organization called Stop Mandatory Vaccination bought 54 percent of the anti-vaccine ads on Facebook, the study found. (Sun, 11/15)