MedPage Today: California Doctors Lose Homes And Much More To Devastating Fires
Sion Roy, MD, was on cardiac ICU service at Harbor UCLA Medical Center last week when he got a call from someone in his Big Rock neighborhood of Malibu. ... Though it was hours before the evacuation order, Roy, a cardiologist, was aware of the fires affecting Los Angeles because of the uptick in patients seeking care for cardiac issues, probably due to smoke and stress. But fire warnings had happened before, even last month with the Franklin fire that threatened his neighborhood. (Clark and Henderson, 1/15)

The New York Times: Even Homes That Evade The Fire Face Toxic Ash Risk, Studies Show
Armed with two garden hoses hooked up to a sputtering tap, Matthew Craig battled fire and smoke to save his house from the onslaught of flames that devastated much of Altadena, a once leafy corner of Los Angeles County. The wind felt like dragon’s breath, he said, and “we were all eating smoke.” But even though his home is secure, for now, it will be a long time before he and his family feel safe enough to go back. Every room in the house, he said, was covered in ash, dust, soot and dirt that the high winds had blown inside. (Tabuchi, 1/15)

Los Angeles Times: The Long-Term Health Effects Of L.A. County Wildfire Smoke
The explosion of smoke and ash that erupted from two wildfires was beyond belief. In the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, as the Eaton fire engulfed homes and businesses, a thick blanket of smoke rolled over the horizon, blocking out the sun. The wildfires produced the heaviest smoke and soot the region has seen in recent memory. (Briscoe, 1/16)

The Hill: Palisades Fire Firefighters Taking Part In First-Of-Its-Kind Cancer Study
The Wildfire Conservancy is conducting a first-of-a-kind cancer study on firefighters battling the Palisades Fire. The goal is to track how the extreme conditions increase firefighters’ risk of cancer. The study comes after the International Agency for Research on Cancer officially classified firefighting as a carcinogenic profession. (Smith, 1/15)

Los Angeles Times: Signs Of Rent Gouging Rise Across Region In Fires’ Wake, Bringing Calls For Enforcement
In the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles, the asking rent for a two-bedroom condo jumped from $5,000 to $8,000 in the wake of the fires that started last week and have left thousands homeless. In Venice, a single-family house saw a jump of nearly 60%. In Santa Monica, an owner listed a five-bedroom house for $15,000 above what they were asking last year — a gain of more than 100%. (Dillon, Flemming, Khouri and Mehta, 1/15)

AP: For LA Water Issues, Misinformation Spreads Nearly As Fast As The Wildfires
A billionaire couple was accused of withholding water that could help stop Los Angeles’ massive wildfires. Democratic leadership was blamed for fire hydrants running dry and for an empty reservoir. Firefighters were criticized for allegedly using “women’s handbags” to fight the fires. Those are just a few of the false or misleading claims that have emerged amid general criticism about California’s water management sparked by the fierce Los Angeles fires. (Goldin and Peterson, 1/15)

Los Angeles Times: L.A.'s Wellness Community Is Healing The Fire-Torn City
L.A.’s wellness community is rising up to support wildfire victims and firefighters in a sprawling citywide effort. Free services include grief therapy, plant meditations, massages for firefighters and even a “healing snow ceremony.” (Vankin, 1/15)

Becker's Hospital Review: How Wildfires Tested — And Demonstrated — City Of Hope's Resilience
The Eaton fire broke out in Altadena on the morning of Jan. 8, just eight miles from City of Hope's main campus in Duarte, where about 230 cancer patients were hospitalized. As the fire spread, multiple staff members, including faculty and physician leaders, arrived in the middle of the night to care for patients, some even after being evacuated from their homes. "That combination of how scary the moment was, combined with the inspiration of people truly putting patients first and living that value, was in full effect in the middle of the night," CEO Robert Stone told Becker's on Jan. 13. (Kuchno, 1/15)

Becker's Hospital Review: ​​Uber Health, Guardian Partner To Address Care Gaps
[San Francisco-based] Uber Health is partnering with the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America to provide support for members with approved long-term disability claims. Starting mid-January, eligible Guardian Group Benefits members will receive Uber vouchers in their Uber app, enabling them to access rides for medical appointments and rehabilitation services, according to a Jan. 15 news release. (Diaz, 1/15)

Becker's Hospital Review: Why Sutter Health Inked A $1B AI Imaging Deal
Sacramento-based Sutter Health furthered its collaboration with GE HealthCare by inking a seven-year deal Jan. 14, one of the health tech company's largest-ever strategic partnerships with a health system. Becker's talked to Sutter Health COO Mark Sevco about the significance of the agreement and how clinicians and patients are expected to benefit. (Bruce, 1/15)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Advantage 2025 Enrollment Data Retracted By CMS
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services withdrew an eagerly awaited report detailing how health insurance companies fared during the Medicare Advantage annual enrollment period after identifying faults in the data Wednesday. The agency plans to issue a corrected report next week, according to a notice CMS published several hours after releasing the enrollment figures. (Tepper, 1/15)

Stat: Virtual Care Companies Strut GLP-1 Plans, Data During JPM Week
At the J.P. Morgan Health Care conference this week in San Francisco, drugmakers had their sights set on the next generation of GLP-1 medications, alternatives, and a growing list of indications beyond diabetes and obesity. Meanwhile, the digital health industry was squarely focused on managing the impact of existing drugs, which have placed enormous pressure on health care spending. (Palmer, 1/16)

Modern Healthcare: JPM 2025: AdventHealth, Novant Health Set $30B Revenue Targets
Nonprofit health systems presenting at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference this week said they aim to expand into $30 billion organizations through both organic growth and mergers and acquisitions. AdventHealth and Novant Health have each set $30 billion annual revenue targets, fueled by a growing demand for care and interest in deal-making. If successful, those health systems would follow other major nonprofit systems ... which eclipsed that revenue threshold after completing major mergers. (Kacik, 1/15)

Modern Healthcare: JPM 2025: Alignment Reaffirms Medicare Advantage Goals
Alignment Health remains committed to balancing margin expansion with membership growth this year, executives told investors Wednesday during the first of two health insurer presentations at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. "We're never going to swing to a growth at all-cost mentality,” Chief Financial Officer Thomas Freeman said. “At the same time, we're not going to shoot for a profitability at all-cost mentality either." (Berryman, 1/15)

Stat: At J.P. Morgan Conference, Anxiety And Excitement About China
Are we entering a world in which all of the exciting new therapeutics come from China? That question and variations of it could be heard at coffee meetings and late-night cocktail parties this week during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. (DeAngelis, 1/15)

The Hill: NIH Director To Resign After One Year In Office
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Monica Bertagnolli will resign on Jan. 17, she told staff this week, ending her tenure as the head of the $48 billion biomedical research agency after only a year. “I am so proud of what NIH has been able to achieve in such a short time under my leadership,” Bertagnolli said in her announcement, touting a list of initiatives launched that she hopes the next administration will continue. (Weixel, 1/15)

Los Angeles Times: FDA Bans Red Dye No. 3 Because It Causes Cancer In Rats
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that the much-maligned red dye No. 3 will be banned in the United States because it has been shown to cause cancer in animals. The decision, lauded by consumer advocacy groups, comes a full 25 years after scientists at the agency determined that rats fed large amounts of the artificial color additive were much more likely to develop malignant thyroid tumors than rats who weren’t given the food coloring. They also had an increased incidence of benign tumors and growths that can be precursors to cancer. (Kaplan, 1/15)

Roll Call: DEA, HHS Finalize Rule Allowing Telehealth Drug Treatment 
The Biden administration Wednesday finalized a long-awaited rule laying out how some health care providers can prescribe gold-standard opioid use disorder treatments through telehealth. (Hellmann and Raman, 1/15)

MedPage Today: FDA Finally Proposes A Nicotine Crackdown, Years In The Making
On Wednesday, the FDA issued its long-awaited proposal to drastically limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes and some other tobacco products, with the goal of making them less addictive. In its proposed rule, the FDA would cap the nicotine level at 0.7 mg/g of tobacco in cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products. The FDA's proposal would apply to cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, most cigars, and pipe tobacco -- not e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, noncombusted cigarettes, waterpipe tobacco, and smokeless tobacco products. (Lou, 1/15)

Stat: Biden Administration, Gilead Settle Battle Over Patents For HIV PrEP Pills
After years of sparring, the Biden administration and Gilead Sciences have settled a contentious lawsuit over patents for a pair of HIV prevention pills in a case that raised questions about the extent to which government-funded research should lead to affordably priced medicines. (Silverman, 1/15)

The War Horse: Republicans Propose Bills That Steer More Veterans Into Private Health Care
With the new Congress sworn in and President-elect Trump poised for his second inauguration, Republicans have queued up a number of bills that could widely expand veterans’ access to the private health care system, setting up the latest battle over VA’s reliance on what’s known as community care. Efforts to reform how the Department of Veterans Affairs provides health care to millions of veterans are heating up in 2025 as pressures to bring down costs and lower wait times for care mount. (Marshall-Chalmers, 1/16)

Los Angeles Times: Republican Bill Would Ban Transgender Girls From High School Sports In California
On the first day of the California Legislature’s new session, Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, an Orange County Republican, introduced a bill that would ban transgender high school students from competing on girls’ sports teams. ... Sanchez’s proposed law, called the Protect Girls’ Sports Act, is almost certain to fail in a Legislature controlled by a Democratic supermajority with a record of embracing inclusion for LGBTQ+ Californians. (Branson-Potts, 1/16)

Newsweek: California: 1-In-50 Men Admit To Being Violent Towards Their Partner In Past Year
One in every 50 men in California has been violent against an intimate partner in the past year. Just under two percent of California men—the equivalent of some 280,000 individuals—self-reported perpetrating some form of intimate partner violence (IPV), or violence against a romantic partner, according to a new paper in the journal PLOS ONE. (Thomson, 1/15)

Voice of OC: Will Motels Become Orange County’s New Winter Shelter?
With no planned walk-up cold weather shelter, Orange County officials are moving forward with a pilot program that will give families with young kids vouchers to stay at a motel or hotel during the winter. ... Orange County Second District Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, in partnership with the nonprofit Families Forward, is launching a $200,000 program to help vulnerable families in his district stay warm and sheltered. (Elattar, 1/15)

CIDRAP: CDC Tests Confirm Another H5N1 Case From California
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed another human H5N1 avian flu case in California, which likely reflects follow-up testing of a presumed positive involving a San Francisco child. The latest confirmation puts the national total since early 2024 to 67 cases, of which 38 are from California. (Schnirring, 1/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: Experts Have Theories On Why We Haven’t Seen A Winter COVID Surge Yet
For the past four years, almost like clockwork, the start of holiday season has been marked by an unwelcome guest: sharply rising cases of COVID-19 and seemingly everyone coming down with a telltale cough or fever. ... But this winter respiratory virus season, COVID rates have thus far remained conspicuously low, according to statewide test positivity rates. Now, halfway through January, those low levels are still holding — offering some partial relief to hospitals, which are currently seeing surges in flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) patients. (Ho, 1/16)