HealthLeaders: Why And How Safety Net Hospitals Are Marketing Themselves
Before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, safety-net hospitals didn’t spend much time or money on marketing and advertising. They didn’t have to—the bulk of their patient populations didn’t have much in the way of choice. But as more and more patients have become insured, these providers are having to market their services to remain competitive for the first time. While some are having difficulty finding their footing, others anticipated this eventuality years before Obamacare became law and are meeting the challenge head-on. (Aiello, 3/16)

The San Francisco Business Times: With Another $55M, East Bay Company Brings Clarity To DNA Sequencing
A fast-moving Pleasanton company landed $55 million in Series C financing, it said Thursday, to help commercialize its DNA sequencing technologies and push more through the pipeline. 10x Genomics Inc. said the funding was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. and included new investors Softbank and JS Capital Management LLC, the private investment firm overseen by Jonathan Soros, the son of billionaire and political financier George Soros. (Leuty, 3/17)

Meanwhile, Spirox, a California-based company that specializes in making medical devices for patients with blocked noses, gets a $45 million investment —

Reuters: KKR Leads $45M Investment In Medical Maker
Private equity firm KKR & Co LP (KKR.N) said on Tuesday it is investing $45 million into California-based medical device maker Spirox Inc with a group of other investors, the latest in a string of similar deals in the sector. KKR led the latest round of financing that included investors such as venture capital fund HealthQuest Capital, private equity firm Aisling Capital and investment firm Aperture Venture Partners. (3/15)

The San Francisco Business Times: With FDA Approval, Berkeley's Got A Brand New Drug
A next-generation blood-clotting treatment — made and tested at Bayer HealthCare's Berkeley campus — won approval from the Food and Drug Administration for use by hemophilia A patients, the company said Thursday. FDA approval of Kovaltry, which last month scored European and Canadian regulatory approvals, is a next-step move by Bayer to protect and build on its longtime hemophilia A franchise. Kogenate FS for hemophilia A patients is the German company's second-best-selling product, and Bayer continues development of an experimental once-a-week treatment, called damoctocog. (Leuty, 3/16)

The Desert Sun: Don't Drink The Water: Lead Found In California Schools
For two years, the students at Orange Center Elementary School outside of Fresno have been told not to drink the water. Drinking fountains are turned off and instead, children refill bottles from five-gallon water coolers placed in every classroom. Lead in the tap water means there's also no cooking allowed. Prepared meals are brought in from outside the school, but some students in this poor community prefer to carry lunches from home. It will be at least next school year before the school's own drinking water is drinkable again. (Newkirk, 3/16)

Los Angeles Times: Even In Peak Mosquito Season, Zika Risk Is Low In California
As summer approaches, some worry that warmer weather could attract mosquitoes and bring the fast-spreading Zika virus stateside. But new research finds that, in the West at least, that probably won't be the case. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Public Library of Science Currents: Outbreaks, researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research analyzed travel and weather patterns to estimate the potential size of mosquito populations from month to month in 50 major U.S. cities. They focused on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which have been carrying the Zika virus across more than 30 countries in the Americas. (Karlamangla, 3/16)

In other public health news —

Los Angeles Times: Could A Gene-Editing Tweak Make Pigs Organ Donors For Ailing Humans?
Despite their slovenly habits in agricultural settings, pigs raised in biomedical labs are clean enough that many humans would welcome —indeed, do welcome — the use of their tissue for life-saving transplants. Transplanted heart valves routinely come from pigs as well as cows. But the dream of transplanting whole pig organs into humans who need new hearts, livers, kidneys or lungs — xenotransplantation — is not so simple a matter. In addition to the usual challenges posed by the immune system's inclination to reject foreign tissue, the use of pig organs to fill the yawning gap between the supply of human organs and demand for them must contend with the problem of PERVs. (Healy, 3/16)

The San Francisco Chronicle: Seafood Recommendations Can Pose Mercury Risk To Pregnant Women
Women who follow the federal government’s draft recommendations for the amount of fish they should eat may end up exceeding environmental guidelines for mercury exposure during pregnancy, a new study has found. (Colliver, 3/16)

The Ventura County Star: Public Health Officials Investigate Cluster Of Heart Illnesses
A cluster of illnesses involving a potentially fatal heart condition has triggered a public health investigation involving Ventura County, state and federal agencies. Ventura County Public Health Officer Dr. Robert Levin said late Wednesday the efforts focus on nine incidents of cardiomyopathy, a condition involving an abnormal heart muscle. One person died, said Levin, declining to offer details because of patient privacy issues. (Kisken, 3/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Obama Picks Merrick Garland For Supreme Court, Setting Off High-Stakes Fight With Senate
President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, unleashing a showdown with the Republican-controlled Senate over the court’s first vacancy in six years. Wednesday’s nomination of Judge Garland, a veteran jurist with a reputation for consensus-building, landed in the middle of a heated election battle and at a time when the nation’s highest court is bitterly divided on hot-button issues that include abortion, campaign finance and gun rights. (Lee and Peterson, 3/16)

Politico: Planned Parenthood Chief Urges Senate To Hold Hearing On Garland
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards headed into the West Wing right after Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination was announced — and she seems to like what she heard. "Judge Garland seems like a responsible and qualified nominee,” Richards said in a statement Wednesday afternoon, throwing her support behind giving the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals chief judge a hearing. Abortion rights, of course, are the perennial major issue in Supreme Court politics — and on the frontburner for the Supreme Court this year, with a big case challenging Texas state restrictions in front of the justices. (Dovere, 3/16)

Modern Healthcare: SCOTUS Pick Has History In Healthcare-Related Cases
Lawmakers will almost certainly spend coming months digging through Garland's judicial record to see where he stands politically. As chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, Garland, who is viewed as moderate, has been involved in a number of healthcare-related cases, sometimes siding with hospitals and other times with HHS. Garland was part of a three-judge panel in May that partially sided with hospitals in a case over Medicare outlier payments. ... Also, in December, Garland was part of a three-judge panel that sided with HHS in a case brought by Fayetteville City Hospital in Arkansas, which was reportedly closed by Washington Regional Medical Center in 2012. ... A few years earlier, in 2011, Garland was part of a three-judge panel that sided with Beverly Hospital in Massachusetts after it challenged reimbursements it received from HHS for services it provided to low-income beneficiaries. ... Garland's court has also dealt with several challenges to the Affordable Care Act. (Schencker, 3/16)

Politico: Garland’s Lack Of Standout Opinions A Boon In Confirmation Fight
Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s nearly two-decade tenure as a judge on the D.C. Circuit holds few seminal opinions that capture his legal philosophy—and, for those rooting for his confirmation, that may be a good thing. ... A former prosecutor, Garland often split with his liberal colleagues on criminal justice issues, while broadly approving of federal government regulatory actions in areas like health and the environment. On the First Amendment, he has leaned towards free speech rights, while his stances in other areas like abortion rights and church-state issues are uncharted. (Gerstein, 3/16)

The New York Times: Patients In Pain, And A Doctor Who Must Limit Drugs
Susan Kubicka-Welander, a short-order cook, went to her pain checkup appointment straight from the lunch-rush shift. “We were really busy,” she told Dr. Robert L. Wergin, trying to smile through deeply etched lines of exhaustion. “Thursdays, it’s Philly cheesesteaks.” Her back ached from a compression fracture; a shattered elbow was still mending; her left-hip sciatica was screaming louder than usual. She takes a lot of medication for chronic pain, but today it was just not enough. Yet rather than increasing her dose, Dr. Wergin was tapering her down. “Susan, we’ve got to get you to five pills a day,” he said gently. She winced. (Hoffman, 3/16)

In other national news —

NPR/ProPublica: Drug-Company Payments Mirror Doctors' Brand-Name Prescribing
Doctors have long disputed the accusation that the payments they receive from pharmaceutical companies have any relationship to how they prescribe drugs. There's been little evidence to settle the matter, until now. A new ProPublica analysis has found that doctors who receive payments from the medical industry do indeed prescribe drugs differently on average than their colleagues who don't. And the more money they receive, the more brand-name medications they tend to prescribe. (Ornstein, Jones and Tiga, 3/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Some Co-Ops Under Health Law Still Have Tepid Enrollment
Four of the 11 remaining health cooperatives set up under the Affordable Care Act are still seeing tepid enrollment, according to a report by federal investigators, in another sign such insurance startups are on shaky footing despite more than $1 billion in federal loans. The cooperatives were launched under the health law to provide affordable insurance and infuse competition into the market. Twelve of the 23 co-ops that got off the ground have closed as a result of financial troubles. The Obama administration is seeking to recoup about $1.2 billion in federal loans to the co-ops that have closed. (Armour, 3/16)

The Associated Press: Deficit-Slashing Plan Advances Through House Panel
A key House panel on Wednesday approved a GOP plan to eliminate the federal budget deficit without tax increases demanded by Democrats, relying on sharp cuts to federal health care programs, government aid to the poor, and hundreds of domestic programs supported by lawmakers in both parties. The 20-16 Budget Committee vote could be the high point for the GOP blueprint, which is short of the majority votes needed to advance through the GOP-controlled House. Two tea party Republicans defected on the otherwise party-line vote. (3/16)

Reuters: Senate Advances Bill To Aid Drug-Dependent Newborns
A bipartisan bill designed to improve the health and safety of babies born to mothers who used heroin or other opioids during pregnancy was approved by a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday. The bill, which will now move to the Senate floor, was prompted by a Reuters investigation last year. Reuters found 110 cases of children who were exposed to opioids while in the womb and who later died preventable deaths at home. No more than nine states comply with a 2003 law that calls on hospitals to alert social workers whenever a baby is born dependent on drugs, Reuters found. (Shiffman and Wilson, 3/16)

Modern Healthcare: Conservative Lawmakers, Aetna CEO Suggest Advantage Plans Could Help Save Medicare
Lawmakers, health policy experts and the chief executive of one of the nation's largest insurers believe Medicare Advantage could help keep the Medicare program solvent. On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee's Health Subcommittee held a hearing on Medicare's future. The Medicare board of trustees said in its most recent annual report that Medicare will be able to cover its costs until 2030, but suggested congressional action to strengthen the program's future. (Muchmore and Herman, 3/16)