The Associated Press: Plan To Give Health Care To Every Californian Moves Forward
California lawmakers pushed forward Wednesday with a proposal that would substantially remake the health care system of the nation's most populous state by replacing insurance companies with government-funded health care for everyone. (Cooper, 4/26)

Los Angeles Times: California Single-Payer Healthcare Bill Passes First Committee Test
The Senate Health Committee approved the measure on a 5-2 vote after a nearly three-hour hearing, but Democrats and Republicans alike signaled unease with the major question still unanswered in the legislation: how the program would be paid for. The bill, SB 562, would establish a publicly run healthcare plan that would cover everyone living in California, including those without legal immigration status. The proposal would drastically reduce the role of insurance companies: The state would pay for all medical expenses, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency services, dental, vision, mental health and nursing home care. (Mason, 4/26)

The Mercury News: California's Healthcare-For-All Bill Passes First Committee
“Colleagues, let’s do something big for our state and our constituents,’’ the bill’s co-author Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said Wednesday. “Let’s solve one of the most problematic issues of our time.’’ (Seipel, 4/27)

Capital Public Radio: Single-Payer Bill Passes First Vote In California Legislature 
The bill drew opposition from the health care industry and business groups. “We agree with much of what has been said here today, and we believe there is common ground,“ says Teresa Stark with Kaiser Permanente, which is both a health care provider and insurer. “But this bill, unfortunately, is divisive and counter-productive and actually could cause harm.” (Adler, 4/26)

Sacramento Bee: California Doctors Try To Bring More Diversity To Medical Research
In a 2011 report, the Food and Drug Administration noted that blacks were 12 percent of the population but only 5 percent of clinical trial participants; Hispanics, at 16 percent of the population, represented only 1 percent. By being underrepresented in clinical trials, women and ethnic minorities can be at a huge health disadvantage when it comes to finding the best treatments or cures for certain diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancers (colon, prostate, cervix, lung) and high blood pressure. (Buck, 4/27)

Ventura County Star: Simi Valley Hospital Will Change Its Name
Simi Valley Hospital is becoming Adventist Health Simi Valley in a name change announced to more than 800 employees this week. The new name, which still must be approved by the state and is expected to become official this summer, comes as part of changes across the Adventist Health system. The faith-based system has owned the Simi Valley facility since the hospital launched more than 51 years ago. (Kisken, 4/26)

East Bay Times: Fremont Police Program Aimed At Reducing Mental Health Holds
The Fremont Police Department wants to create a couple of two-person street teams to help steer mentally ill people toward treatment and services instead of a locked-up hospital room. Each “mobile evaluation team” would consist of a police officer and a licensed clinician from Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services whose primary assignment would be to intervene in mental health crises situations that police currently are dispatched to handle...According to department statistics, Fremont officers between 2012 and 2016 annually responded to an average of slightly more than 850 reports in which people were determined to be a danger to themselves or others and transported to a county hospital for a mental health evaluation. Such calls are commonly referred to as 5150, after the California Welfare and Institutions code that defines when mental health holds should be used. (Geha, 4/26)

In other news from across the state —

Fresno Bee: Fresno Medical Residency Program Gets $2.2 Million From CalViva Health
A proposed Fresno medical residency program got a financial boost Wednesday with a $2.2 million commitment from the locally governed Medi-Cal managed care plan for Fresno, Kings and Madera counties. CalViva Health said it has agreed to help Valley Health Team, a federally qualified health center, launch a Teaching Health Center residency program to train family doctors in Fresno. The program is scheduled to begin July 1 to replace the Sierra Vista Family Medicine Residency Program, which opened four years ago and will end June 1. (Anderson, 4/26)

KPCC: What Should LAUSD Do About Its Ballooning Benefits Costs? 
It's impossible to talk about the financial elephants on the back of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a blue ribbon panel concluded in 2015, without bringing up two things: pension and healthcare costs. ... By 2020, L.A. Unified's obligations to the two state-run agencies providing pensions to its employees will gobble up one out of every $10 that flows into the district's general fund. (Stokes, 4/27)

The New York Times: Hard-Line Republican Caucus Backs Revised Bill To Repeal Obamacare
The House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-line conservatives who were instrumental in blocking President Trump’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act last month, gave its approval Wednesday to a new, more conservative version, breathing new life into Republican efforts to replace President Barack Obama’s health law. (Steinhauer and Pear, 4/26)

The Associated Press: Conservatives Back Revised Health Bill, GOP Moderates Balk
The changes would let states escape a requirement under President Barack Obama's health care law that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates. They could also be exempted from Obama's mandate that insurers cover a list of services like maternity care, and from its bar against charging older customers more than triple their rates for younger ones. (Fram, 4/26)

The New York Times: What Changed In The Health Repeal Plan To Win Over The Freedom Caucus
A month after pulling their health care overhaul bill from the floor, House Republicans are growing increasingly confident that they may have found a way to pass it. An amendment drafted by Tom MacArthur, a New Jersey congressman, would keep much of the American Health Care Act in place. But it would set up a waiver program that would allow states to apply to eliminate three major insurance regulations established by Obamacare. (Sanger-Katz, 4/26)

Politico: GOP Senators Not So Keen On House's Obamacare Repeal
The House may finally be on its way to scrapping Obamacare, but don’t expect the Senate to go along: Any plan sent over will undergo major surgery — and survival is far from assured. The hurdles in the upper chamber were on vivid display Wednesday as House Republicans celebrated their breakthrough on the stalled repeal effort. The compromise cut with House Freedom Caucus members won over the right flank, but the changes will almost surely make it harder to pick up votes in the more moderate-minded Senate. (Kim and Everett, 4/27)

Politico: Ryan Moves To Ax Lawmaker Exemption In Obamacare Repeal Bill
House GOP leaders are moving quickly behind the scenes to iron out a wrinkle in their latest Obamacare repeal legislation: a controversial provision that preserves Obamacare coverage protections for members of Congress and their staffs while allowing states to opt out of them. Late Wednesday night, the House Rules Committee posted the text of a one-page bill that strikes the exemption for lawmakers that caused such a ruckus for Republicans on Wednesday morning. Discovery of the loophole, first reported by Vox, had triggered charges of hypocrisy from Democrats the entire day. (Bade and Bresnahan, 4/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration To Continue Key Funding For Health Law
President Donald Trump’s administration said Wednesday he would maintain critical funding for health plans, a pledge that reduced the chances of a government shutdown but left uncertainty in the already fragile insurance markets. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) Wednesday afternoon that the administration would keep making “cost-sharing reduction” payments to insurers despite the lack of a formal appropriation for them in the April spending bill, a Pelosi aide said. (Radnofsky, Peterson and Wilde Mathews, 4/26)

Los Angeles Times: White House Will Continue Obamacare Payments, Defusing A Potential Obstacle In Talks To Avert Shutdown
The funding, totaling about $7 billion this year, soon became a bargaining chip in the current talks over a must-pass spending bill to prevent a government shutdown before a midnight Friday deadline. Democrats seized on Trump's threat to end the payments as a way to negotiate with Republicans who wanted extra funding for military programs or the border wall with Mexico. (Mascaro and Levey, 4/26)