Los Angeles Times: All Clear At Loma Linda Hospital After Swatting Call About Armed Man
An all-clear was issued at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in San Bernardino County around 8 p.m. Wednesday after reports of a possible gunman in the emergency department prompted an evacuation of the facility, authorities said. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in an 8:10 p.m. statement that the incident appeared to be a “swatting” call and that no injuries were reported. (Harter and Campa, 3/12)

Los Angeles Times: SoCal Surgery Went Wildly Wrong, Leading To Amputation, Lawsuit Says
For three days, a former trauma room nurse pleaded for a test to discover the root cause of the “excruciating” and prolonged pain suffered by her husband, a UCI Medical Center patient. Doctors, surgeons and other medical personnel, however, wouldn’t listen, she alleges. ... After three days, medical staff finally acted, she says, but it was too late for the patient. The man who entered UCI’s hospital in Orange for outpatient knee surgery ultimately had the lower half of his leg amputated. (Campa, 3/13)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Illumina To Cut $100M In Costs To Cope With China Ban
Illumina lowered its annual financial forecast and says it plans to cut about $100 million in costs after China banned imports of its gene sequencers last week. The San Diego maker of gene-sequencing machines and chemicals — technology that allows scientists to analyze DNA to understand diseases and develop drugs — said Monday that it will continue to invest in its growth strategy, while also adjusting to the latest developments in China. (Rocha, 3/12)

Becker's Hospital Review: Inside Civica Rx's 2025 Sourcing, Expansion Strategies
Civica Rx, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company founded in 2018 to combat drug shortages and high medication costs, is preparing for a transformative 2025. President and CEO Ned McCoy shared with Becker's some of the company's key objectives for the year, including the launch of some of the first medications from its Petersburg, Va.-based plant, the expansion of its insulin program and the continued growth of its hospital and retail portfolios. (Murphy, 3/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Retractions, Walkouts Plague Science Journals Eager To Churn Out Research 
Some scientists say the for-profit industry’s fast growth makes it harder to police fraud and low-quality work. (Subbaraman, 3/13)

Los Angeles Times: If Trump Cuts Medicaid, This California Republican's House Seat Would Be Imperiled
Rep. David Valadao faced a no-win decision last month: Fall into line behind President Trump and vote for a budget resolution that would almost certainly cut into Medicaid funding, risking his constituents’ wrath; or vote against it, catapulting his party into chaos and setting himself up for a primary opponent possibly backed by Trump. Valadao, a Republican dairy farmer from Hanford, chose his party. (Gomez and Pinho, 3/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Medicare Agency To End Some Demonstration Projects, Cancel $2 Generic Drug Initiative
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to terminate four demonstration projects at the end of 2025, closing out models affecting primary care, kidney care and healthcare payments in the state of Maryland. The agency will also make changes to other projects, including dropping a planned initiative that would offer certain generic drugs to Medicare enrollees for $2. CMS said its planned terminations would save nearly $750 million, and an agency official said the projects would affect millions of patients. (Mathews, 3/12)

Axios: Hospice Industry Gets Reprieve As Trump Admin Pauses Oversight Program
A federal effort to increase oversight of hospice care has been put on hold by the Trump administration, resetting efforts to root out fraud and abuse in an industry that receives more than $25 billion from Medicare annually. (Goldman, 3/13)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Nominee To Run Medicare And Medicaid, Testifies Before A Senate Committee Friday
Mehmet Oz is heading to Washington and straight to the hot seat. The celebrity doctor and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate, nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will testify before a committee of senators Friday. (Terruso, 3/12)

Axios: White House To Withdraw Controversial CDC Director Nomination
The White House is withdrawing the nomination of Dave Weldon to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), per a source close to Senate health committee. Why it matters: The former Florida congressman was scheduled to appear before the committee this morning for his confirmation hearing. But his anti-vaccine views have garnered attention since he was nominated months ago and were sure to play a prominent role in questioning. (Owens, 3/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Trump’s Environmental Justice Cuts At EPA Could Affect California
The Trump administration’s plan to shutter the Environmental Protection Agency’s programs on equity and justice could cripple efforts to curb pollution in California’s most disadvantaged communities, from the Central Valley to the Inland Empire to San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point. While EPA officials have not specified what employees or divisions will be targeted in the move, between 25 and 50 people in the agency’s Pacific Southwest Region, which includes California and three other states, work predominantly on environmental justice issues and may be vulnerable, according to former EPA staffers. (Alexander, 3/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F.’s Top Chinese Diplomat Criticizes Trump’s Tariffs And Denies China’s To Blame For Fentanyl Crisis
In response to an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, the Chinese Consul General in San Francisco issued a sharp condemnation Wednesday of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on all Chinese imports and his targeting of China over the fentanyl overdose crisis. Zhang Jianmin argued that San Francisco will be harmed by 20% tariffs, which will also damage cooperation between the two countries in tackling the fentanyl crisis, which has ravaged the city. (Cheang, 3/12)

The Washington Post: Social Security Scraps Far-Reaching Cuts To Phone Services After Post Report 
The Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team was weighing the change to root out alleged fraud. The shift would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades to access earned government benefits. (Natanson, Rein, Dwoskin and Siddiqui, 3/12)

The Washington Post: USDA’s $1B In Cuts Leaves Farmers And Schools Bracing For Impact
The Trump administration last week moved to cut more than $1 billion in programs that helped schools and food banks buy fresh food and meat, leaving farmers and educators across the country worried about wide-ranging impacts. Some local and state leaders said the loss of funding will make it more difficult to feed hungry people in their areas. Farmers and those who work in food security said the cuts could shutter farms and ranches that depended on those federal dollars. (Brasch, Somasundaram and Blaskey, 3/13)

NBC News: What The Education Department Layoffs Could Mean For Students With Disabilities
Massive layoffs initiated this week at the Education Department could hamstring the federal government’s efforts to assist students with disabilities, former officials and education experts said, citing blows to the agency’s civil rights and research divisions. The Office for Civil Rights lost at least 243 union-eligible staff members, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, and an unknown number of supervisors. The office historically had around 600 attorneys handling complaints alleging discrimination based on race, gender, disability and sexual orientation, and most already had caseloads of 50 or more. (Kingkade and Edelman, 3/12)

The New York Times: Government Shutdown Looms With Senate Democrats Opposing 6-Month Funding Bill 
Senate Democrats said on Wednesday that they would refuse to back a Republican-written stopgap bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, significantly raising the chances of a government shutdown at the end of the week. The announcement left congressional leaders without a clear path to avert a shutdown that would begin at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday should Congress fail to act by then to extend federal funding. Senate Republicans would need the support of at least eight Democrats to overcome procedural hurdles and bring a spending measure to a final vote. Just one, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, has so far declared he would vote to break any filibuster. (Hulse, 3/12)

Marin Independent Journal: Marin County Extends Shelter Crisis Status, Eases Building Code
Marin County supervisors voted Tuesday to renew a shelter crisis declaration, paving the way for emergency housing for West Marin residents threatened with eviction and others who are homeless. (Halstead, 3/12)

Bay Area News Group: San Jose Extends Ban On Lying, Sitting On Sidewalks Downtown
Facing a barrage of complaints about homeless residents on downtown walkways, San Jose’s leaders just toughened the city’s ban on sitting or lying down on public sidewalks. An updated ordinance added two more hours to the current ban — prohibiting those activities from 8 a.m. to midnight — in a move aimed at bolstering safety and accessibility. The ban previously started at 10 a.m. Potential violators continue to face misdemeanor charges. (Patel, 3/13)

KQED: Report: Unhoused Man Seen Alive Before Being Crushed During Vallejo Cleanup
An unhoused man was seen alive on the morning he was crushed to death during a city-run trash cleanup in Vallejo on Christmas Eve, according to a death investigation report released to KQED. The Solano County Coroner’s Office late last month identified the man as 58-year-old James Edward Oakley II, originally of American Canyon. Local advocates for unhoused residents said they knew him as a longtime member of the homeless community who had for some time lived in the area bordering Vallejo and American Canyon, where he was killed. (Rancaño, 3/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Plans To Open A New Sober Living Project. Is More On The Way?
San Francisco is on the brink of getting a new drug-free housing facility, which has long been a goal of city officials and recovery advocates looking to expand abstinence programs in response to the fentanyl crisis. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has released plans to convert the Civic Center Motor Inn at 364 9th St. into its first sober living transitional housing program. The program, called Baldwin Place, is expected to open this summer and would serve up to 56 guests who are homeless or at risk of becoming unhoused. Each guest could stay for up to two years. (Angst and Morris, 3/13)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Sonoma, Napa Health Officers Air Concern Over Widening US Measles Outbreaks, Risks For Unvaccinated 
As President Donald Trump’s top health official spreads fringe theories about current measles outbreaks, Sonoma and Napa county health officials are encouraging local residents to continue inoculating their children with what is widely considered one of the best vaccines ever created. (Espinoza, 3/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: 2 New Measles Cases In California Underscore Vaccination Importance
Two new confirmed cases of measles in California highlight the risk for the unvaccinated, and the need for all Californians to check their vaccination status, infectious disease experts said Wednesday. The cases, reported in Los Angeles and Fresno counties this week, bring California’s total measles count to five for 2025, according to state data. They follow — but appear unrelated to — a major measles outbreak in West Texas that has resulted in more than 250 cases and two deaths in unvaccinated individuals. (Ho, 3/12)