Good morning! Here are your top California health stories of the day.
Newsom Proposes That California Create Its Own Generic Prescription Drugs To Help Curb Costs: As part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2020-21 budget plan, he wants to make California the first state to create its own generic drug label. He also wants state agencies and private insurers to negotiate drug prices together to leverage lower prices. Under Newsom’s plan, California would contract with existing drug manufacturers to produce pharmaceuticals for the state. His plan would also create a single market for drug purchasing in California, forcing drug manufacturers to sell their drugs at the same price to everyone in the state. It isn’t clear how substantial a dent a state-manufactured generic program would make in health care costs in California, though. Generic drugs make up 90% of all prescriptions but account for a fraction of drug spending because they’re so much cheaper than brand-name prescriptions. Newsom also wants to create a new Office of Health Care Affordability tasked with cracking down on sectors of the health care industry that aren’t doing enough to reduce costs. Read more from Sophia Bollag of the Sacramento Bee, Judy Lin of CalMatters, and Melody Gutierrez of the Los Angeles Times.
Kaiser Permanente, Union Team Up To Recruit And Train Health Care Workers For California: Kaiser Permanente and the Service Employees International Union jointly announced Futuro Health, a new organization seeded with $130 million from Kaiser to pay for training of allied health workers. The investment, representatives from both organizations said in a joint statement, is expected to pay for the training of 10,000 current and future allied health professionals in jobs such as licensed vocational nursing, medical coding, health information technology, radiology and laboratory services. The endeavor is an outgrowth of the most recent round of contract talks between the two parties and is intended to expand and also mature the health care workforce. California is projected to need another 500,000 healthcare workers by 2024, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Read more from Paul Sisson of The San Diego Union-Tribune and Kevin Smith of the Southern California News Group.
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
Los Angeles Times:
California May Extend Health Coverage To Seniors Here Illegally
California has been slowly erasing legal immigration status as a requirement for medical coverage under the state’s healthcare program for low-income residents, allowing children and, this month, young adults living in the U.S. illegally to enroll. Now, Democratic lawmakers expect Gov. Gavin Newsom to embrace an effort to include seniors without legal status in the state’s Medi-Cal program — either in his new state budget or with his signature on legislation. (Gutierrez, 1/8)
Modern Healthcare:
Verity Proposes Closing Los Angeles Hospital After Deal Falls Through
Embattled Verity Health is asking a judge to let it close its Los Angeles hospital after a deal to buy the company out of bankruptcy fell through. El Segundo, Calif.-based Verity said in a court filing this week that it needs to close St. Vincent Medical Center and its dialysis clinic on an emergency basis within 30 days to avoid continued economic losses, which it says amounted to $65 million in fiscal 2019—more than $175,000 per day. (Bannow, 1/8)
Sacramento Bee:
Dignity’s Planned Elk Grove Hospital Will Cost $327 Million
Dignity Health estimates that it will spend roughly $327 million to construct a new 200,000-square-foot hospital in Elk Grove that will replace south Sacramento’s Methodist Hospital, Methodist President Phyllis Baltz said Wednesday. Baltz, along with other Dignity and government leaders, formally announced the hospital at a morning event looking over the field that will be the facility’s future of home. It will be built off Elk Grove Boulevard, between the Costco warehouse club and the company’s outpatient center and medical office building on Wymark Drive. (Anderson, 1/9)
KQED:
Transgender Prisoners Say They 'Never Feel Safe.' Could A Proposed Law Help?
Carmen Guerrero spent less than nine hours with her new cellmate before he murdered her. ... But advocates backing a bill pending in the California State Legislature on safe housing for transgender prisoners said the killing was an example of how CDCR has failed transgender inmates. Senate Bill 132 would allow prisoners to live with those who match the gender they identify with — not the one they were assigned at birth. (Leitsinger, 1/8)
Capital Public Radio:
Stockton Police Announce New Strategic Plan Focused On Reducing Gun Violence, Increasing Department Diversity
Stockton’s Police Chief has announced a three-year strategic plan to combat crime, reduce blight, and increase trust within the community. The plan will focus on reducing gun violence and homicides with the continued use of gang sweeps. It also calls for hiring a more diverse workforce and increased training for officers. (Ibarra, 1/8)
KQED:
More Electric Scooters, More Head Injuries
A surge in electric scooters on city streets has led to a dramatic increase in the number of injuries, with a rate of head injury double that of cyclists, according to a UCSF study. The study found an 82% increase in scooter-related injuries from 2017 to 2018, the dawn of the e-scooter age locally. (Fiore, 1/8)
The Mercury News:
Third Monterey County Flu Death Reported
A third Monterey County victim has died from complications of the flu since the season began on Oct. 1, health officials confirmed Wednesday. Details of the individual, such as age, gender and whether or not the victim had received an influenza vaccine are not known, said Karen Smith, the public information officer for the Monterey County Health Department. It was the first flu-related death reported in the county in 2020. (Taylor, 1/9)
Capital Public Radio:
Homeless Camps Along Truckee River Posing Waste Problems For Reno City Workers
Nevada is facing a housing affordability crisis just like many other parts of the West. A growing population is causing rents to rise and putting the squeeze on the city’s low-income residents. And now that crisis is spilling onto the banks of the Truckee River flowing through downtown Reno. (Johnson, 1/8)
Sacramento Bee:
Can Sacramento, California Solve Homelessness In 2020?
On a recent afternoon, Lois Caesar was crouched over on the sidewalk, taping strips of silver space blanket material to her tent, preparing for another night sleeping outdoors in near-freezing temperatures. “I’m getting tired of the cold,” said Caesar, 57, who grew up in Oak Park and has been homeless for about a month. “I wish there were better places the homeless could go.” (Clift, 1/9)
The Mercury News:
Weedmaps Makes Good On Pledge To Drop Rogue California Marijuana Shops, Though Bad Actors Find Loopholes
Facing massive fines from state regulators, Irvine-based Weedmaps has taken major strides toward fulfilling its pledge to drop ads for illicit cannabis shops from its online directory, cutting about 2,700 rogue stores from its site since the start of this year. The company’s long-awaited move to follow state law is drawing praise from legal cannabis operators. Some licensed stores have seen an uptick in business since Jan. 1, a trend they attribute to Weedmaps making it more difficult for potential customers to find unlicensed competitors. (Staggs, 1/9)
The Associated Press:
Program Meant To Curb Repeat Hospital Stays Fails Big Test
Researchers thought they had a way to keep hard-to-treat patients from constantly returning to the hospital and racking up big medical bills. Health workers visited homes, went along to doctor appointments, made sure medicines were available and tackled social problems including homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. Readmissions seemed to drop. The program looked so promising that the federal government and the MacArthur Foundation gave big bucks to expand it beyond Camden, New Jersey, where it started. But a more robust study released Wednesday revealed it was a stunning failure on its main goal: Readmission rates did decline, but by the same amount as for a comparison group of similar patients not in the costly program. (1/8)
The New York Times:
Deflating Results Of Major Study Point To Better Ways To Cut Health Care Waste
Research has established that as much as a quarter of American health spending is waste. There are two basic ways of tackling it, by focusing narrowly on specific types of patients or on the system as a whole. The patient-centered approach starts with this fact: A relatively small group of patients — 5 percent — account for half of all health spending. (Frakt, 1/8)
CBS News:
Cost Of Having A Baby Hits $4,500 Out Of Pocket With Employer-Provided Insurance
The cost of giving birth in America has skyrocketed in recent years — even for women with employer health insurance. A major study looking at women with employer-provided health insurance found that the average new mom spent $4,500 out-of-pocket to give birth in 2015, the most recent year data are available. That's a 50% increase from 2007, when the typical new mom paid out just over $3,000 of her own money. It's also more than three times the rate of inflation over that time period. (Ivanova, 1/8)
The Associated Press:
'Obamacare' Mandate: Hot For Lawyers, Ho-Hum To Consumers
The repeal of an unpopular fine for people without health insurance has had little impact on “Obamacare” sign-ups or premiums, a gap between the real world and legal arguments from conservatives again challenging the Affordable Care Act. The 10-year-old law has proved more resilient than its creators or detractors imagined, even as the Supreme Court considers whether to take up the latest effort to roll it back. (1/8)
The Associated Press:
Appeals Court Keeps Block Of Trump Immigration Rule In Place
A federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday rejected a motion from the Trump administration that would have allowed it to implement a policy connecting the use of public benefits with whether immigrants could become permanent residents. The ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration's motion to lift a temporary national injunction that had been issued by a New York district court in October after lawsuits had been filed against the new policy. (1/8)
The Associated Press:
Walgreens Begins 2020 Much As It Ended 2019, On A Sour Note
Walgreens is kicking off its year much as it ended its last, with a big earnings plunge. First-quarter net income tumbled about 25% as the drugstore chain filled fewer prescriptions than expected and continued to work through a cost-cutting program geared to produce billions in future savings. (1/8)
The Associated Press:
Cancer Group Finds Biggest One-Year Drop In U.S. Death Rate
Researchers on Wednesday reported the largest-ever one-year decline in the U.S. cancer death rate, a drop they credited to advances in lung-tumor treatments. The overall cancer death rate has been falling about 1.5% a year since 1991. It fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, according to the new American Cancer Society report. That’s the largest drop ever seen in national cancer statistics going back to 1930, said Rebecca Siegel, the lead author. (1/8)
The New York Times:
China Identifies New Virus Causing Pneumonia-Like Illness
Chinese researchers say they have identified a new virus behind an illness that has infected dozens of people across Asia, setting off fears in a region that was struck by a deadly epidemic 17 years ago. There is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been tied to any deaths. But health officials in China and elsewhere are watching it carefully to ensure that the outbreak does not develop into something more severe. (Wee and McNeil, 1/8)