Los Angeles Times: Thousands Of Deaths From Hospital Superbugs Are Going Unreported, Research Shows
Many thousands of Californians are dying every year from infections they caught while in hospitals. But you’d never know that from their death certificates. Sharley McMullen of Manhattan Beach came down with a fever just hours after being wheeled out of a Torrance Memorial Medical Center operating room on May 4, 2014. A missionary’s daughter who worked as a secretary at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the height of the space race, McMullen, 72, was there for treatment of a bleeding stomach ulcer. Soon, though, she was fighting for her life. (Petersen, 10/2)

CALmatters: How Would The Prop. 56 Tobacco Tax Really Affect Poor Smokers?
Next month, California voters will decide whether to approve the biggest jump in cigarette taxes since the state began taxing tobacco in 1959. Prop. 56, backed by a wide coalition of public health, healthcare and union groups, would impose an additional $2 per-pack excise tax on cigarettes—raising the current state levy from 87-cents per pack for the first time in nearly two decades. The initiative would also extend tobacco taxes to the growing e-cigarette market for the first time. ... how true is the claim that the tax would mostly be paid by California's poor? (Levin, 10/1)

In other 2016 election news —

KQED: As California Considers Marijuana Legalization, Concerns Linger Over Labeling Edible Products 
Californians may soon vote to legalize recreational marijuana, which means edible products containing the drug will be more widely available and could accidentally fall into the wrong hands. Proposition 64 establishes warning labeling and packaging requirements for edible products containing marijuana. But public health advocates say the goodies, when taken out of their packaging, look just like regular candy and baked goods and could still easily be consumed by mistake or in excessive amounts. (Fine, 9/30)

Fresno Bee: Rabies: The Shots Don’t Hurt Much, But Paying For Them Might
Each year, Fresno County receives about 1,000 reports of dog bites and about 100 reports of cat bites that lead to the animals being quarantined for 10 days to rule out rabies. Last year, the county had 19 reports of bites by wild animals. (Anderson, 10/3)

In other pharmaceutical news —

The Mercury News: EpiPen Outrage: It Costs About $8 To Make A 2-Pack, Engineers Say
Mylan insists most patients pay less than $50 out of pocket for a two-pack, though critics say insurers pass the higher wholesale drug costs along to consumers in other ways. But what does it really cost to make? To get the answer, Wallace and Krevitt dissected a two-pack of EpiPens into individual pieces, carefully weighed each plastic part and applied an industry-standard method for analyzing the manufacturing costs. (Seipel, 10/1)

San Francisco Business Times: Depomed Thwarts Generic' Grab Of Nucynta Pain Drug, But Fight's Not Over
Shares of Depomed Inc. climbed sharply late Friday as the company beat back an attempt by a trio of generic drug makers to create cheaper forms of the pain drug Nucynta.The ruling in favor of Newark-based Depomed (NASDAQ: DEPO) extends the patent life of the drug until December 2025, insuring the company locks up the market and controls the price of Nucynta. (Leuty, 9/30)

The Mercury News: Marin Patients’ Medical Data Lost After Cyber Attack
The Marin Healthcare District and Prima Medical Foundation are notifying more than 5,000 patients that some of their medical data was lost due to a glitch that followed a ransomware attack in August. Prima Medical Foundation supports the Prima Medical Group, many of whose doctors work closely with Marin General Hospital. The computer records of Marin Medical Practice Concepts, a Novato company that provides medical billing and electronic medical records services to many Marin physicians, were hacked on July 26. (Halstead, 9/30)

In other health technology news —

Sacramento Bee/Baxter Bulletin: Baxter Medical Center To Monitor Patients Via Telehealth 
A $320,538 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture is helping Baxter Regional Medical Center reduce its readmission rate while implementing a Complex Care Management, allowing staff members to better manage patients' care. The Baxter Bulletin reports that the grant was primarily developed around the telehealth, a remote patient monitoring device that will be placed into patients' home. The telehealth device will benefit patients who are high-risk to return to the hospital, such as the ones who've suffered from pneumonia, a heart attack, congestive heart failure and others. (Louis, 10/1)

NPR: Contaminated Water Can Infect Dental Patients, Though Cases Are Rare
When people go to the dentist, they generally expect to leave in better health than when they walked in. But the water that dentists use to rinse teeth sometimes carries infectious bacteria. The Orange County Health Care Agency in California says that nearly two dozen children who received so-called baby root canals, or pulpotomies, are thought to have developed dangerous bacterial infections. Dentists perform pulpotomies to remove infected pulp inside a baby tooth so the rest of the tooth can be spared. (Ross, 9/30)

The Mercury News: 25 Kids Now Sickened In California Dental Outbreak
The county’s Health Care Agency on Friday put the number of children who contracted serious dental infections at an Anaheim clinic at 25. The agency said the 25 patients, whose ages range from 3 to 9, were all hospitalized at some point. The affected children underwent pulpotomies, or baby tooth root canals, at Children’s Dental Group in Anaheim between April 6 and July 28. Earlier this week, the Health Care Agency said six children remain hospitalized. (Bharath, 10/1)

KQED: Realignment 5 Years On: Counties Build Jails For Inmates With Mental Illness
Five years removed from one of the most sweeping criminal justice reforms ever implemented in the state, California’s 58 counties are still coming to grips with the effects of the plan known as Public Safety Realignment. Realignment aimed to satisfy a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the state prison population by some 30,000 inmates by transferring responsibility for non-serious, non-violent and non-sexual felons to counties. Today, at least 40 California counties have either completed or are planning jail construction projects. (Emslie, 9/29)

In other news —

San Francisco Business Times: Sutter Opens New Outpatient Psychiatric Center
To help reduce the shortage of mental heath facilities in the area, Sutter Health has opened a $1.1 million outpatient psychiatry center on Folsom Boulevard. (Anderson, 9/30)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: New Screening Guidelines For Breast Cancer Prevention Fuel Debate Over Mammograms 
For decades, enduring a mammogram was a rite of passage for women turning 40. Absent symptoms or genetics that would trigger screening at an earlier age, women knew reaching the four-decade mark meant they’d soon face getting squeezed in a machine for their own good. But evolving recommendations from the American Cancer Society and from an influential federal task force on preventive medicine now hold that it’s better to wait until age 45 or even 50 to start having routine mammograms. (Callahan, 10/1)

Meanwhile, clinics in the Sacramento area are offering free screenings —

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento-Area Clinics Offer Free Breast Cancer Screenings 
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month [started] Saturday, and clinics around Sacramento will be offering free breast cancer screenings to promote early detection of the disease. A mammography screening can help reduce the likelihood of death from breast cancer among women ages 40 to 74, especially for those older than 50, according to the National Cancer Institute. (Caiola, 9/30)

Modesto Bee: Modesto Junior College Professor Is Another Victim Of The West Nile Virus 
For the past nine months, Modesto Junior College professor Kimberly Kennard has been in and out of hospitals, battling a disease that has devastated her health. Students at MJC have missed a professor who inspires them to pursue careers in social work and addiction counseling, and who firmly believes in students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The illness, diagnosed as West Nile virus, has been endemic in the region since 2004, and continues to ambush lives, this time an educator who has headed the human services program at MJC. (Carlson, 10/1)

In other news from across the state —

Bay Area News Group: Contra Costa Social Services Workers Start Three-Day Strike
Striking members of the Service Employees International Union Local No. 1021, which includes social workers and services-eligibility workers, started picketing Friday and say they will continue to march in front of Contra Costa County health facilities through Tuesday. (Richards, 9/30)

San Francisco Business Times: Prothena Corp. Dale Schenk Dies After Battle With Pancreatic Cancer
Prothena Corp. President and CEO Dale Schenk died Friday morning after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. He was 59. Schenk, who spoke to the San Francisco Business Times in August about how his diagnosis had changed his perspective as a scientist and drug industry executive, for the past four years had been CEO of Ireland-domiciled Prothena (NASDAQ: PRTA). The company has research headquarters in South San Francisco, where Schenk was based. (Leuty, 9/30)

The New York Times: Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have To Change To Survive
The fierce struggle to enact and carry out the Affordable Care Act was supposed to put an end to 75 years of fighting for a health care system to insure all Americans. Instead, the law’s troubles could make it just a way station on the road to another, more stable health care system, the shape of which could be determined on Election Day. Seeing a lack of competition in many of the health law’s online insurance marketplaces, Hillary Clinton, President Obama and much of the Democratic Party are calling for more government, not less. (Pear, 10/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Obama Administration Ends Drive To Ban Bare-Bones Health Plans
The Obama administration has ended a bid to ban the sale of bare-bones health plans after losing a court fight on the issue this summer. Government lawyers told a federal court earlier this month they would accept its decision that they had overstepped by seeking to effectively end so-called fixed indemnity plans, which are low-cost but pay out only set cash amounts for medical events such as a hospital visit or prescription purchase. (Radnofsky, 9/30)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: Insider Q&A: A Front-Row Seat For The Drug Pricing Battle
Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, sits at the center of the storm over rising drug prices. ... Miller has watched super-sized drug prices infuriate patients and strain the health care system with growing frequency, starting when a new hepatitis C drug hit the market at $84,000 for a course of treatment and continuing through the recent revelation that the price of Mylan's EpiPen rose more than 500 percent since 2007. (10/2)

The Associated Press: Consider A Second Opinion On That Medical Bill
If a medical bill shows up, don’t pay it right away. At least that’s the advice of some experts who say you should closely review all your medical billing information for any errors first. The American Medical Association estimates that 7.1 percent of bills paid by commercial health insurers contain errors, while others estimate errors are far more common than that.(Sell, 10/2)

The Washington Post: Nobel Prize In Medicine Awarded To Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi For Work On ‘Cell Recycling’
Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for discovering and elucidating a key mechanism in our body's defense system that involves degrading and recycling parts of cells. Known as autophagy, this process plays an important role in cancer, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, birth defects from Zika virus and numerous other devastating diseases. (Cha, 10/3)

The Washington Post: There’s A Reason Many Antiabortion Leaders Support Trump: His Running Mate
In January, Marjorie Dannenfelser and nine other antiabortion activists urged Iowa voters to support anyone but Donald Trump. Now she is fully backing the Republican nominee, chairing the pro-life coalition of a man the activists said “cannot be trusted.” The dramatic about-face for Dannenfelser and other religious and social conservatives who were once leery of supporting a brash, thrice-married New Yorker who supported abortion rights and called Holy Communion a “little cracker” is due in large part to one man: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. (Zezima, 10/1)