CalMatters: California Has A New Tool To Fight Homelessness. Trump Could Tank It 
Gov. Newsom launched an ambitious program that uses Medi-Cal to help Californians access housing, healthy food and more. Now, its fate is in the hands of President-Elect Trump. (Kendall, 12/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: Gaping Wounds, Puffy Hands, Heart Infections: S.F. Drug Users Suffer From More Than Overdoses
Health experts say respiratory illnesses, chronic wounds and swelling of the hands and feet are common for those living on the streets of San Francisco in the throes of addiction. Although treating and preventing fatal overdoses is a central focus for first responders and health workers, they’re also looking out for other health impacts. (Angst, 12/12)

Stat: White House Takes Credit For 'Largest Drop' In Overdose Deaths 
Drug deaths are falling for the first time in recent memory, representing a rare glimmer of hope after years of record overdose mortality. On Wednesday, to the surprise of some experts, Biden administration officials sought to take credit for the decrease. (Facher, 12/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: Medical Schools Partner To Develop Obesity Curriculum
Ten universities — including Loma Linda University School of Medicine and the University of California-San Diego — are working on a national effort to create an obesity curriculum for medical schools. (Taylor, 12/12)

Becker's Hospital Review: UCLA Health Nurse Exec Heads To New Orleans Hospital
LCMC Health's Touro hospital in New Orleans has named Quanna Batiste-Brown, DNP, RN, as its new chief nursing officer, effective Dec. 2. Dr. Batiste-Brown most recently served as CNO of ambulatory care nursing for UCLA Health and as an adjunct associate professor at the UCLA School of Nursing in Los Angeles. (Bean, 12/11)

Bloomberg: Lawmakers Plan Bill Forcing CVS, Cigna, UnitedHealth To Sell Pharmacies
A bipartisan coalition of US lawmakers has drafted legislation that would force prescription drug middlemen to divest pharmacies they own. Some of the largest US health-care companies own pharmacy benefit management units that negotiate drug prices for employers and other customers. If enacted, the policy would compel CVS Health Corp., Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group Inc. to shed drug-dispensing operations that have become profit centers for the vertically integrated conglomerates. (Tozzi, 12/11)

Modern Healthcare: Labcorp Completes Acquisition Of Ballad Health Lab Assets
Labcorp has completed its acquisition of select non-hospital lab assets from Ballad Health, the independent laboratory company said Wednesday. A purchase price was not immediately available. Johnson City, Tennessee-based Ballad Health will retain operations of its inpatient and emergency department laboratory services, as well as lab services for hospital-based practices, according to a news release. (DeSilva, 12/11)

ProPublica: FDA Hasn’t Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls, 1 Potentially Deadly 
The drug potassium chloride has been on the market for decades, widely prescribed to help the nerves and muscles — including the heart — function properly in patients with low potassium. Too much of it, however, can kill you. At high doses, it is so effective at stopping the heart that some states have used injections of it for executions. So the danger was obvious in May, when Indian drugmaker Glenmark Pharmaceuticals recalled nearly 47 million capsules for a dire flaw: The extended-release medication wasn’t dissolving properly, a defect that could lead to a perilous spike in potassium. (Callahan, Cenziper and Rose, 12/12)

The New York Times: House Passes Defense Bill Denying Transgender Health Coverage For Minors 
A divided House on Wednesday passed a defense policy bill that would direct $895 billion to the Pentagon and other military operations, moving over the opposition of Democrats who objected to a provision denying coverage for transgender health care for the children of service members. ... The provision in question would bar TRICARE, the military’s health care plan, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18. (Demirjian, 12/11)

CNN: In Biden Administration’s Final Days, FDA Advances Proposal To Set A Nicotine Limit On Tobacco Products
As the Biden administration winds down, the US Food and Drug Administration has submitted a proposed rule that could significantly lower the amount of nicotine in tobacco products and potentially prompt more people to quit smoking. (Christensen, 12/11)

CBS News: Bidens Host Women's Health Conference To Focus On Health Care Gender Gap
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Women's Health Research on Wednesday, showcasing progress in women's health initiatives to close the gender gap in health care. Last year, the president and first lady introduced a White House initiative to undertake what they said would be the "most comprehensive" effort any administration has taken to support women's health research. (Pound, 12/11)

Politico: Biden Threatens To Veto Bill That Would Have Given Trump New Judicial Appointments 
Donald Trump is eager to appoint dozens of new judges once he becomes president. Joe Biden has other plans. The president threatened to veto a bill to expand the number of federal judges because he doesn’t want to give the president-elect new appointment opportunities, one of the outgoing president’s closest allies said in an interview. The move dooms legislation spearheaded by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who had spent months pushing for the creation of 63 new judgeships. (Cancryn, 12/11)

NBC News: Biden Administration Has No Current Plans To Authorize A Bird Flu Vaccine For Humans
Biden administration officials said Wednesday they have no current plans to authorize a stockpiled bird flu vaccine, despite an escalating outbreak among livestock in the U.S. and at least 58 human infections across seven states. The move means any decisions about a bird flu vaccine will likely be left to health officials in the incoming Trump administration, who may be led by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump has picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. (Lovelace Jr., 12/11)

The New York Times: Could Cats Become a Carrier of Bird Flu?
Domestic cats could provide an unexpected new route for the bird flu virus H5N1 to evolve into a more dangerous form, according to a new study published on Monday. In the year since the virus began circulating in dairy cattle, it has killed many cats, primarily on farms with affected herds. It has also sickened at least 60 people, most of whom had close contact with infected dairy cows or poultry. (Anthes and Mandavilli, 12/11)

Stat: Gilead To Test Once-A-Year HIV Prevention Shot 
Gilead said Tuesday that it will soon begin Phase 3 testing for a drug it believes could prevent HIV infection with just a single shot every year. Such a medicine, if proven effective, would be the closest thing to a vaccine the HIV field has produced in four decades of research. The company plans to begin the trial next year, with an eye toward regulatory filings in late 2027. (Mast, 12/11)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Healdsburg Senior Living's Legal Settlement Shows Dark Side Of Corporate Ownership
Lacey Ernst recalled Healdsburg Senior Living Community as “an excellent place to work” before it was sold to a large corporation. (Barber and Espinoza, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: What Sleeping In Prison Is Like: Moldy Beds, Bright Lights, 24/7 Noise 
The Marshall Project and Los Angeles Times have identified more than 30 lawsuits regarding sleep deprivation behind bars over the last three decades — including one that ended in a settlement requiring changes at a San Francisco jail three years ago. More than two dozen interviews with incarcerated people, guards and oversight officials from Georgia to Texas to California show that extreme lack of sleep continues to be a problem in prisons and jails. (Blakinger and Heffernan, 12/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: Psychedelic Church In San Francisco To Close Following Alleged Harassment From City Officials
Zide Door, a psychedelic church in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, is set to close its doors by the end of this year, citing what Pastor Dave Hodges described as harassment by city officials. The controversial church, one of two Bay Area branches of the Church of Ambrosia offers psilocybin mushrooms as a spiritual sacrament to its 120,000 members. (Vaziri, 12/11)

Bloomberg: Food Date Labels Are Broken. Like California, The US Government Is Trying To Fix Them 
California could be the first state to ban food labels such as “sell by” or “best before” under a law signed in October by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The legislation is aimed at reducing both food waste and the state’s climate-warming emissions. The law is set to take effect in July 2026, establishing a new standard for food labeling in the state. (Hirji, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: Hate Crimes In L.A. County Hit An 'Unacceptable' All-Time High In 2023 
A report from Los Angeles County’s Commission on Human Relations cites 1,350 hate crimes — an increase of 45% from the year before. (Ellis, 12/11)

The New York Times: ADHD Diagnosis In Older People Has Increased 
An analysis by Truveta, a health care data and analytics company, shows that the rate of first-time A.D.H.D. diagnoses has been on the rise since 2021, but the increase has occurred only among people 30 and older. From January 2021 to October 2024, the rate of first-time diagnoses rose about 61 percent among those ages 30 to 44 and 64 percent among those ages 45 to 64. As a result, about 31 percent of first-time diagnoses are now among people ages 30 to 44, the largest proportion of any age group. (In 2018, younger adults took the top spot.) (Caron, 12/11)

Berkeleyside: Berkeley Psychiatrist's New Book Blasts United Healthcare
Rosenlicht, a clinical professor at UC San Francisco School of Medicine who has spent 40 years in psychiatry and has a practice on Solano Avenue, is himself frustrated by the American health care system. (Furio, 12/11)

The New York Times: Police Say Suspect’s Notebook Described Rationale for C.E.O. Killing
Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare outside a company investors’ day in Manhattan, was arrested with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials. The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said. (Southall and Cramer, 12/11)

The Hill: NYPD Investigating Possible Mangione Back Injury And Insurance Claims
New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, may have filed an insurance claim for back pain last year. “So we’re looking into whether or not the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn’t help him out to the fullest extent.” He added that investigators believe Mangione’s injury may have been sustained on July 4, 2023. (Fields, 12/11)

The New York Times: Health Insurance Workers Fearful Amid Public Anger After Slaying of C.E.O.
The fatal shooting last week of an executive on the streets of New York City plunged his family members and colleagues into grief. For rank-and-file employees across the health insurance industry, the killing has left them with an additional emotion: fear, with many frightened for their own safety and feeling under attack for their work. One UnitedHealthcare worker who processes claims described being cleareyed about the American health care system’s shortcomings, but also believes that she and her colleagues did their best to help patients within the limits of that system. Like most workers interviewed, she did not want to be named because, given the reaction after Mr. Thompson’s killing, she feared for her own safety. (Abelson, Smith, Benner and Harris, 12/11)

Stat: How AI Is Supercharging The Fight Over Health Insurance Denials
Like many Americans, Holden Karau said she was fed up with health insurance. The software engineer’s disillusionment began in 2019, when her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, balked at covering physical therapy after she was hit by a car and could not walk. She said the hassles piled on stress, forced her to pay more out of pocket, and delayed access to care she needed to recover from multiple broken bones. (Ross, 12/12)