Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
A Reality Check On Artificial Intelligence: Are Health Care Claims Overblown?
As happens when the tech industry gets involved, hype surrounds the claims that artificial intelligence will help patients and even replace some doctors. (Liz Szabo, )
Good morning and happy new year! Here are some of your top California health stories.
Judge Cites ‘Dire Public Interest’ In Decision To Block Calif. Law On Dialysis Clinics’ Profits: A federal judge on Monday blocked enforcement of a California law aimed at preventing increased billing costs at dialysis clinics. If Assembly Bill 290 is permitted to take effect before it is reviewed, “thousands of California HIPP recipients—who number among the poorest and most medically vulnerable of all Californians—may not be able to afford the dialysis treatments that keep them alive (or may be forced to dedicate all of their scant financial resources to medical care) and may face further delays in receiving a transplant," Judge David O. Carter wrote. California passed the law this year in an effort to deter dialysis clinics from encouraging patients to enroll in health plans that give them higher reimbursement rates. But the lawsuit contends the law will force the American Kidney Fund to close down the program, which helps about 3,700 patients in the state. Read more from The Associated Press.
Fear Of High Premiums Prompts Californians To Dip Into Direct Primacy Care Marketplace: Direct primary care is a growing family medicine business model that has gained popularity in the past decade. It is like a subscription service for basic care. Patients pay physicians a monthly or annual fee that covers most primary care services, including clinical visits and lab tests. The doctors opt out of dealing with insurance carriers. But it does not cover major, complicated medical situations, such as cancer treatments, emergency room visits, surgeries, and specialty care. Proponents say DPC fills a gap in current insurance offerings. And, unlike typical insurance-based models where medical services are billed for separately, DPC physicians have no financial incentive to provide more treatments and tests than necessary. On the flip side, this also gives little incentive to provide robust, thorough care. Read more from Nicole Hayden of the Palm Springs Desert Sun.
Can Anything Be Done About The Endless Cycle Of Homelessness, Emergency Rooms and Jail Cells? One thing California lawmakers is trying is a forced treatment program for Californians caught in that very cycle. Last year lawmakers agreed to create a narrow 5-year pilot program that makes it easier for San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego to conserve homeless individuals with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse disorders. A second law, passed this year, expanded the rules to allow 50 to 100 more people in San Francisco to be placed under conservatorship. But civil rights advocates have raised serious concerns: In 2018, Susan Mizner, the disability rights program director for the ACLU, described conservatorship as “the biggest deprivation of civil rights aside from the death penalty” and said the law would incentivize police to repeatedly detain homeless individuals. So far, only San Francisco has adopted it. That reflects another reality: Different counties have different rules. Even without the pilot program, depending on where you live, public defenders, judges, public guardians and others have different interpretations of the law. Read more from Jocelyn Wiener of CalMatter
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
The Wall Street Journal:
Wave Of Blazes Strains Firefighting Network, From Australia To California
For years, the U.S. and Australia shared firefighting resources—such as specialist firefighters—in each of their off-seasons. But that tradition is coming under pressure as fire seasons start earlier and run for longer, due in part to climate change, scientists say, as well as drought and extreme temperatures. Major fires broke out in Australia within days of a wildfire north of San Francisco in late October, a period of extreme fire weather that had California utilities collectively cutting power to millions of people. (Pannett and Cherney, 1/2)
Los Angeles Times:
California, Climate Change And The Trauma Of The Last Decade
The wildfires were more destructive. The drought was the longest on record. And the storms, when they finally came, unleashed more water than our dams could contain. To live in California over the last decade has meant enduring a steady procession of weather-related disasters, each one seemingly worse than the last. Five of the 10 largest fires in state record books have occurred since 2010. (Netburn, 12/26)
KPBS:
Medi-Cal Expands Health Coverage For Young Adults Who Can't Prove Legal Residence
California is removing barriers to health care that keep some people from seeing a doctor. A law that began this new year extends the state's Medicaid services, called Medi-Cal, to low-income young adults who may be in the U.S. illegally. The change expands full-scope Medi-Cal benefits, including medical, dental, mental health and vision care for 19- to 25-year-olds regardless of immigration status. (Mento, 1/2)
Sacramento Bee:
How In-Home Care Keeps High-Risk Patients Out Of Hospitals
North Highlands resident Lori Swanson still marvels that her doctor went out of his way to pick up her medication from the pharmacy: “I was not able to get it, and he went out of his way to help me.” A Medi-Cal patient, Swanson has a foot injury that makes it difficult to get around. She lost her job of 17 years because of the injury, she said, and because she had no income, she lost her home and everything she owned. Then, last summer, she signed up for a home-based care management program through her insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, she said, and one by one, a multidisciplinary team of caregivers entered her world and helped to restore her to the lifestyle that she had before her medical crisis. (Anderson, 12/30)
Sacramento Bee:
Pellet, Toy Guns Can Play A Factor In Fatal Police Shootings
Maurice Holley, 55, had two pellet guns tucked into his waistband when he dropped his hands and was fatally shot by a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy in October. The pellet guns were fashioned to look like replica firearms. “Fearing he would be shot by the suspect,” the deputy shot Holley nine times, the sheriff’s office said in a news release at the time. Upon discovery of Holley’s fake firearm, the deputy is heard on dash camera video audibly distressed for several minutes before another deputy is able to make it to the rural location. (Sullivan and Finch, 1/2)
Sacramento Bee:
School-Age Child In Placer County Dies From Flu Complications
Placer County Public Health announced Tuesday that a school-age child died from complications from influenza at a regional hospital. Before contracting the flu, the child had been in good health. ...Citing privacy laws, county officials declined to say whether the child had been immunized or had attended public school. (Anderson, 12/31)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Lab Says Its Marijuana Breath Analyzer Will Hit The Market In 2020
Despite marijuana’s growing acceptance nationwide and its legality for recreational use in California, there is no consensus on how THC, its psychoactive ingredient, affects drivers or what levels constitute driving under the influence. That has left lawmakers, police and users grappling with a critical question: If you’re using marijuana, when is it safe to get behind the wheel? An Oakland company believes it’s solved one piece of that puzzle. (Cassidy, 1/1)
Sacramento Bee:
UC Davis Professor Talks About Alzheimer’s Disease Care
Oanh Meyer is no stranger to Alzheimer’s disease. Her everyday life revolves around caring for those who suffer from the ailment. Meyer’s office is at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Sacramento. But her care goes beyond the clinic: Her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a progressive disease that commonly causes dementia and has no cure. (Yu, 12/30)
Ventura County Star:
Cigna, Dignity Dispute Affects Patients At St. John's In Oxnard
Negotiations that failed because of a dispute over payment rates mean Cigna insurance company members are losing in-network coverage at St. John's hospitals in Oxnard and Camarillo. The insurance giant, based in Connecticut, covers more than 16,000 Dignity Health patients across California, including about 7,400 in Southern California. It has contracted with the nonprofit hospital system since the 1990s, according to Cigna spokesman Mark Slitt. (Kisken, 1/1)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Insurance Firm Seeks To Fill Health Care Gaps
UnitedHealthcare advanced its goal of creating community partnerships to help people live healthier lives through a presentation in Ramona at Palomar Health Community Action Council’s Dec. 11 meeting. Monique Knight, the international insurance company’s marketing and community relations manager, described the benefits of connecting to UnitedHealthcare to participants representing various health-related groups. ...As examples of UnitedHealthcare’s partnerships, Knight said the organization provides parent education in the San Diego Unified School District on topics such as pediatric behavioral health, asthma, diabetes and nutrition, and supports a school busing program in the Oceanside Unified School District to help students get to school. (Gallant, 12/26)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Can $500 A Month Change A City? Stockton Tests Universal Basic Income
For 18 months, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration is tracking how the $500 payments change recipients’ lives, a test to prove the viability of a concept known as universal basic income. Supporters argue that providing everyone with a baseline wage would remove financial stresses, improve people’s health and address economic inequality. (Koseff, 1/2)
CalMatters:
California's Homelessness Crisis — And Possible Solutions — Explained
California’s most vexing issue is also its most shameful: the large and rising number of residents who lack a safe place to call home. In a state with vast amounts of wealth, more than 150,000 of its residents sleep in shelters, cars, or on the street. The United Nations compared the tent encampments of San Francisco to the slums of New Delhi and Mexico City. Nearly 5,000 people live in the half square mile of Los Angeles’ Skid Row. And while the problem is most acute in California’s urban centers, homelessness is now a common fixture in many of the state’s suburbs and rural towns. State and local officials have pledged billions in recent years to help, but voters remain frustrated by a lack of visible progress. (Levin and Botts, 12/31)
The New York Times:
Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Talking Much About ‘Medicare For All’ Anymore
In warm-up remarks introducing Senator Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies, young volunteers often say they are supporting her because of her plan to transform the health care system through a single-payer “Medicare for all” program. It happened in Des Moines on Saturday and Oklahoma City last week, and in western Iowa cities like Clarinda and Council Bluffs on Sunday. But Ms. Warren herself is barely speaking of the proposal. After months of attacks from other candidates, and questions and some blowback from both liberals and moderates, the most ambitious and expensive of Ms. Warren’s many plans — and the one most likely to transform the lives of voters — is just a passing mention in her standard stump speech, rarely explored in depth unless a questioner brings it up. (Herndon, 1/1)
The Hill:
Sanders: Speed Of Medicare For All Plan Is A 'Major Difference' With Warren
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday that one of the “major differences” between himself and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is in how quickly they would roll out "Medicare for All," drawing a contrast on the key campaign issue. Sanders and Warren are vying for the progressive mantle in the Democratic presidential primary, but they have largely shied away from criticizing each other. Sanders, however, did point to some daylight on his signature issue of Medicare for All when asked on Tuesday by NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard how he would contrast himself with Warren. (Sullivan, 12/31)
The Associated Press:
Prompt Care Was Key To Sanders' Recovery From Heart Attack
Bernie Sanders suffered “modest heart muscle damage" during his recent heart attack but has since recovered well and is fit enough for the rigors of the presidential campaign and the White House should he win it, according to letters released Monday by his primary care physician and two cardiologists. (12/30)
Politico:
Democrats Seize On Anti-Obamacare Ruling To Steamroll GOP In 2020
At the most recent Democratic presidential debate, candidates largely avoided discussing the lawsuit or Republicans’ years-long efforts to dismantle Obamacare, and instead continued their intra-party battle over Medicare for All. But Senate Democrats, Democratic candidates and outside groups backing them immediately jumped on the news of the federal appeals court ruling — blasting out ads and statements reminding voters of Republicans’ votes to repeal the 2010 health care law, support the lawsuit and confirm the judges who may bring about Obamacare’s demise. (Ollstein and Arkin, 12/26)
The New York Times:
F.D.A. Plans To Ban Most E-Cigarette Flavors But Menthol
The Trump administration is expected to announce this week that it will ban mint-, fruit- and dessert-flavored e-cigarette cartridges popular with teenagers, but allow menthol and tobacco flavors to remain on the market. Flavored liquid nicotine used in open tank systems can continue to be sold, according to two administration officials who have been briefed on the plan. It is an important concession to vape shops that have thrived alongside the booming e-cigarette business in recent years. (Kaplan and Haberman, 12/31)
Politico:
Trump Abandons Sweeping Vape Ban With New Slimmed-Down Rules
The decision is a win for some of Trump's conservative allies, who warned a more sweeping ban on flavored vaping products would alienate the president's base and weaken his reelection effort. However, the carveouts have angered public health groups. "It is a capitulation to both Juul and vape shops and gives a green light to the e-cigarette industry to continue to target and addict kids with flavored products," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free-Kids, in a statement Tuesday. (Owermohle and Diamond, 12/31)
The Associated Press:
3 Years In, No Sign Of Trump's Replacement For Obamacare
As a candidate for the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he would “immediately” replace President Barack Obama’s health care law with a plan of his own that would provide “insurance for everybody.” Back then, Trump made it sound that his plan — “much less expensive and much better” than the Affordable Care Act — was imminent. And he put drug companies on notice that their pricing power no longer would be “politically protected.” (12/30)
The New York Times:
As Tens Of Thousands Died, F.D.A. Failed To Police Opioids
Newly unearthed documents show that the Food and Drug Administration failed to use its policing powers to make sure a program to curb improper prescribing of opioids was effective, researchers say. The lax oversight, they point out, occurred as the epidemic was growing and tens of thousands of people were dying from overdoses each year. In 2011, the F.D.A. began asking the makers of OxyContin and other addictive long-acting opioids to pay for safety training for more than half the physicians prescribing the drugs, and to track the effectiveness of the training and other measures in reducing addiction, overdoses and deaths. (Goodnough and Sanger-Katz, 12/31)
The New York Times:
Opioid Deaths Rise When Auto Plants Close, Study Shows
The last two decades have brought both a sharp decline in automaking jobs in the United States and the rise of a deadly epidemic of opioid abuse. According to a new study, the two trends may well be related. The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that opioid deaths were about 85 percent higher among people of prime working age in counties where automotive assembly plants had closed five years earlier, compared with counties where such factories remained open. (Chokshi, 12/30)
The Wall Street Journal:
Rx For Ailing Indian Health Service: Changes In Spending, Recruitment
Some of the biggest problems plaguing the troubled Indian Health Service, which cares for 2.6 million Native Americans, could be addressed by taking some relatively straightforward steps, according to IHS employees, tribal members, U.S. lawmakers and outside health-care experts. A series of articles by The Wall Street Journal has identified numerous deficiencies at the federal agency, including problem employees, recruitment challenges and regulatory lapses. The turmoil has sparked calls for changes. (Weaver and Wilde Mathews, 12/31)
The Hill:
Five Health Care Fights To Watch In 2020
Advocates hope lawmakers can beat the odds and move major health care legislation in the new year. 2019 opened with bipartisan talk of cracking down on drug prices and surprise medical bills. But it ended without major legislation signed into law on either front, and a host of other health care battles, including a lawsuit threatening the entire Affordable Care Act, looming over the coming election year. Here are five health care fights to watch in 2020. (Sullivan and Hellmann, 12/29)
The New York Times:
Christian Health Cost-Sharing Ministries Offer No Guarantees
Eight-year-old Blake Collie was at the swimming pool when he got a frightening headache. His parents rushed him to the emergency room only to learn he had a brain aneurysm. Blake spent nearly two months in the hospital. His family did not have traditional health insurance. “We could not afford it,” said his father, Mark Collie, a freelance photographer in Washington, N.C. Instead, they pay about $530 a month through a Christian health care sharing organization to pay members’ medical bills. (Abelson, 1/2)
The Washington Post:
Why Millions Of Americans — Including Men — Will Get A Separate Bill For Abortion Coverage Starting In June
If you are one of the 3 million Americans who bought health insurance on an Affordable Care Act state exchange, you may be surprised to open up the mail this summer and find two separate monthly bills. Under a new rule finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services in December, insurers are now required to issue a separate invoice for the amount of your premium that they attribute to abortion services. So you’ll get one bill for abortion services and another for the rest of your insurance coverage. (Cha, 12/26)
The Washington Post:
Facebook Takes Action After LGBTQ Groups Complain About HIV Ads They Find Misleading
Facebook has quietly started removing some misleading ads about HIV prevention medication, responding to a deluge of activists, health experts and government regulators who said the tech giant had created the conditions for a public-health crisis. The ads at issue — purchased by pages affiliated with personal-injury lawyers and seen millions of times — linked drugs designed to stop the spread of HIV with severe bone and kidney damage. (Romm, 12/30)
Stat:
What Will 2020 Bring For Medicine And Science?
Last year, when we asked science and health care soothsayers to peek ahead to 2019, they told us that methamphetamine use would rise (it did), tumor organoids would near clinical use for personalizing cancer treatment and better targeting clinical trials (that’s happening), and price transparency wouldn’t bring lower health spending (that’s true, too). But nobody predicted the outbreak of lung injuries tied to vaping, the failure and attempted resurrection of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab, or the restoration of cellular functions in pig brains after death. We’re back with a new set of predictions for 2020. Let’s see how our experts do this time. (12/30)
The Wall Street Journal:
Hospitals Merged. Quality Didn’t Improve.
The quality of care at hospitals acquired during a recent wave of deal making got worse or stayed the same, new research found, a blow to a frequently cited rationale for tie-ups. Hospital merger-and-acquisition activity has surged in recent years, with executives involved in transactions making the case that greater size will boost quality with new investments and yield other improvements as deal makers benefit from each others’ strengths. (Evans, 1/1)
Reuters:
Study Finds Google System Could Improve Breast Cancer Detection
A Google artificial intelligence system proved as good as expert radiologists at detecting which women had breast cancer based on screening mammograms and showed promise at reducing errors, researchers in the United States and Britain reported. The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, is the latest to show that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer, which affects one in eight women globally. (1/1)
The New York Times:
In The U.S., An Angioplasty Costs $32,000. Elsewhere? Maybe $6,400.
Why does health care cost so much more in the United States than in other countries? As health economists love to say: “It’s the prices, stupid.” As politicians continue to lament the system’s expense, and more Americans struggle to pay the high and often unpredictable bills that can accompany their health problems, it’s worth looking at just how weird our prices really are relative to the rest of the world. (Sanger-Katz, 12/27)
The New York Times:
Chinese Scientist Who Genetically Edited Babies Gets 3 Years In Prison
A court in China on Monday sentenced He Jiankui, the researcher who shocked the global scientific community when he claimed that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, to three years in prison for carrying out “illegal medical practices.” In a surprise announcement from a trial that was closed to the public, the court in the southern city of Shenzhen found Dr. He guilty of forging approval documents from ethics review boards to recruit couples in which the man had H.I.V. and the woman did not, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported. (Wee, 12/30)
The Associated Press:
Century-Old TB Vaccine May Work Better If Given In A New Way
Scientists think they’ve figured out how to make a century-old tuberculosis vaccine far more protective: Simply give the shot a different way. In a study with monkeys, injecting the vaccine straight into the bloodstream dramatically improved its effectiveness over today's skin-deep shot, researchers reported Wednesday. (1/1)
The New York Times:
Crisis Looms In Antibiotics As Drug Makers Go Bankrupt
At a time when germs are growing more resistant to common antibiotics, many companies that are developing new versions of the drugs are hemorrhaging money and going out of business, gravely undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic start-ups like Achaogen and Aradigm have gone belly up in recent months, pharmaceutical behemoths like Novartis and Allergan have abandoned the sector and many of the remaining American antibiotic companies are teetering toward insolvency. One of the biggest developers of antibiotics, Melinta Therapeutics, recently warned regulators it was running out of cash. (Jacobs, 12/25)