CBS Los Angeles: California Lawmaker Introduces Bill To Crack Down On Driving While High
Senator Bob Huff (R-San Dimas) unveiled legislation Tuesday designed to crack down on drugged drivers. Senate Bill 1462 would allow police to use oral fluid drug-screening tests on drivers if there is probable cause a driver is impaired and the driver has also failed sobriety field tests. (4/6)

The Sacramento Bee: Fashion Models Back California Bill To Fight Eating Disorders, Sexism
Fashion models accused their industry of rampant sexism and making demands to stay dangerously thin as they advocated on Wednesday for a California bill that would give models more employee rights. The health of fashion models has become an international issue for policymakers. A new French law prohibits models from working if their body mass index falls below a certain level and authorizes penalties for violators in fashion houses and modeling agencies. (White, 4/6)

The San Jose Mercury News: California Legislation Creating Health, Safety Standards For Fashion Models Moves Forward
A Bay Area legislator's proposal to create health standards and workplace protections for professional models in California cleared its first hurdle Wednesday, aided in part by wrenching testimony from former models who described harsh working conditions that involved sexual harassment and coercion to reach unhealthy weights. (Seipel, 4/6)

The Associated Press: California Hospitals Give $8.5 Million To Tax-Hike Measure
A lobbying group for California hospitals is giving $8.5 million to an initiative campaign to extend a temporary tax increase on the wealthy. The political arm of the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems reported the March 23rd donation on Wednesday. (4/6)

Health Care Finance News: California Insurance Commission To Weigh In On Anthem's $54 Billion Acquisition Of Cigna
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones is expected to render a decision soon on the $54 billion proposed merger between Anthem and Cigna, after holding a public meeting last month. Jones had not made a decision as of Wednesday, according to his press office. (Morse, 4/6)

The Los Angeles Daily News: Los Angeles Launches Campaign To Promote Benefits Of Smoke-Free Apartments
A three-year campaign to urge landlords to switch to smoke-free apartments kicked off Wednesday in Los Angeles, where results of a study show 82 percent of renters would support such policies in their buildings. Billboards and signs placed in bus shelters and other spots across the city of Los Angeles will feature an image of a little girl carrying a teddy bear and wearing an oxygen mask. Signs will include the message: “It’s time for all L.A. to breathe easy.” (Abram, 4/6)

KPCC: Campaign To Push For Smoke-Free Apartments In LA
In an effort to fight the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, a public-private partnership launched Wednesday will seek to persuade apartment and condominium owners in the city of Los Angeles to make their buildings smoke-free. (Plevin, 4/6)

California Healthline: LA Campaign Seeks Smokeless Apartment Buildings
In her mid-city Los Angeles apartment, one of three units in an older home, Carolina Lopez has suffered ill effects from second-hand smoke for more than a year. “My neighbor smokes inside her apartment and on the balcony, one cigarette after another,” Lopez said. “I’m allergic and my body reacts with severe nausea and a headache. When I complained to the owner, the neighbor threatened me.” On Wednesday, a major new community outreach campaign was announced in Los Angeles that Lopez hopes will help. (Stephens, 4/7)

The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento County Fentanyl Overdoses Now At 48
The number of overdoses linked to the potent painkiller fentanyl has grown by six over the past two days to 48, nearly two weeks after the first reports of such overdoses began popping up in the Sacramento region, the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services reported Wednesday. No additional deaths have been reported, leaving the region’s fentanyl-linked death toll at 10. (Buck, 4/6)

The Ventura County Star: Study Shows Rising Alzheimer’s Death Rate In Ventura County
The death rate for nine health conditions, from breast cancer to stroke, improved in Ventura County from 2009 to 2014. Not for Alzheimer's disease. Of 11 illnesses assessed in a new study by the California Department of Public Health, the adjusted death rate worsened only for Alzheimer's and diabetes. (Kisken, 4/6)

In other news —

The Sacramento Business Journal: New Nursing College To Open Next Month In Rancho Cordova
Chamberlain College of Nursing is opening a campus in Rancho Cordova next month. It is the nursing college's first foray into California, spurred by the state's growing demand for nurses. Chamberlain is moving into 28,000 square feet at 10971 Sun Center Drive, a building which had previously been vacant for a decade. The college has invested $4 million into developing the nursing facility, said spokeswoman Shauna Schuda. (Anderson, 4/6)

The Wall Street Journal: White House To Shift About $500 Million For Fighting Ebola To Combating Zika
The White House will shift about $500 million designated for fighting Ebola to combating the Zika virus, saying the step is necessary because Congress hasn’t acted on the administration’s request for emergency funding to tackle the mosquito-borne disease. The $510 million in existing Ebola funding, plus almost $80 million from other sources, will be redirected to allow for an immediate Zika response, Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Wednesday. (Armour, 4/6)

The New York Times: Obama Administration To Transfer Ebola Funds To Zika Fight
In an effort to break the two-month deadlock over funding to fight the encroaching Zika virus, Obama administration officials announced on Wednesday that, as congressional Republicans had demanded, they would transfer $510 million originally intended to protect against Ebola to the Zika battle. Officials from the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the State Department said they would move a total of $589 million to efforts to contain Zika. In addition to funds moved from the Ebola budget, an additional $79 million would come from several other accounts, including money previously allotted to the national strategic stockpile of vaccines and other emergency supplies for epidemics, said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. (McNeil, 4/6)

The Associated Press: White House: $589M To Go To Fight Zika Virus
While the administration has acknowledged that substantial Ebola funding is left over, it has already committed much of it to helping at least 30 other countries prevent, detect and respond to future outbreaks and epidemics. It also wants to preserve money to keep fighting Ebola should it flare up again. (4/6)

NPR: White House Says It Will Cut Ebola Funding To Address Zika
The redirected funds will go to mosquito control and surveillance; education about how to prevent transmission; supporting states and territories in their own Zika virus responses; and developing vaccines and better diagnostic tests. (Bichell, 4/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Allergan CEO Saunders Criticizes Treasury Rules That Scuttled Pfizer Deal
Allergan Chief Executive Brent Saunders criticized as “un-American” and “capricious” the new Treasury Department rules that scuttled the drug company’s $150 billion tie-up with Pfizer Inc. “The rules are focused on the wrong thing: Our government should be focused on making America competitive on a global stage, not building a wall locking companies into an uncompetitive tax situation,” Mr. Saunders said in an interview. (Rockoff, 4/6)

The Wall Street Journal: New Tax Rules On Inversion Deals Are Met With Protest
A day after the Obama administration limited the ability of U.S. companies to do international deals to lighten their tax burdens, Pfizer Inc. and Allergan PLC terminated their planned $150 billion merger and other companies around the globe raced to assess the impact of the new rules. The new Treasury Department rules—the third such attempt to rein in a spate of so-called tax-inversion deals—drew swift condemnation from Allergan Chief Executive Brent Saunders, who criticized them as “un-American” and “capricious.” (Rubin and Rockoff, 4/6)

Reuters: Tax Rules That Killed Allergan-Pfizer Deal May Be Hard To Challenge
U.S. tax rules are more difficult to sue over than other regulations that emanate from Washington, presenting a challenge to anyone considering a lawsuit over an Obama administration plan to discourage deals known as inversions, tax lawyers say. Business trade groups have frequently gone to court since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 to try to block rules about the environment, health or labor unions, but taxes are different because of a law that generally bars suits until a tax is assessed, the lawyers said in interviews this week. (Ingram, 4/6)

The Associated Press: Experts Expect Corporate Tax Inversions To Survive New Rules
President Barack Obama scored a victory this week when Pfizer scrapped a $160 billion overseas deal that would have kept a chunk of the drugmaker's profits beyond the U.S. tax man's reach. But recent, aggressive federal actions that discouraged Pfizer Inc.'s combination with another drugmaker, Allergan PLC, won't stop all so-called inversions, or deals that end with a company relocating to another country — at least on paper — and trimming its U.S. tax bill in the process. Tax and legal experts say these deals, which have come under growing criticism from politicians, will remain attractive to some companies until the U.S. pursues a massive tax law overhaul. ... Inversions have become particularly popular in health care. (4/6)

The New York Times: Pfizer Faces Limited Options After Its Dead Deal With Allergan
Pfizer needs a Plan C. Two years ago, the pharmaceutical giant tried — and failed — to take over the British rival AstraZeneca in a bid to become the world’s largest drug company and lower its tax bill in the process. On Wednesday, Pfizer said another big overseas merger had failed, this time a $152 billion merger with Allergan, after the Obama administration introduced rules that would make the deal much less attractive. Now, Pfizer finds itself at yet another crossroads. (Thomas and Bray, 4/6)