NPR: ACA Insurance Sign-Ups For 2019 Are Starting. Here's What To Expect
It's time for consumers who buy their own health insurance to start shopping for policies for next year. Open enrollment for Affordable Care Act coverage starts Thursday across most of the country. But the shopping and buying experience will vary widely, depending on where people live. In California, for example, where political leaders have always been supportive of the Affordable Care Act, legislators have allocated $100 million for outreach. (Kodjak, 10/31)

The Washington Post: Affordable Care Act Open Enrollment Begins And Will Test Republican Health Policies
During the enrollment season — which lasts six weeks, half as long as it used to be — consumers may buy the health coverage created under the ACA. This is the first enrollment since Congress removed the law’s penalty for people who fail to carry health insurance. With that federal fine scheduled to vanish in January, this year’s marketplaces will furnish evidence for a long-simmering debate: How much of the nation’s gains lately in health coverage have happened because of the law’s insurance mandate, and will coverage tumble without it? (Goldstein, 10/31)

Bloomberg: Obamacare Markets Stabilize As Premiums Remain High For Many
When insurance customers log onto the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up websites Thursday, they’ll find that health-care coverage prices are high but largely stable, after months of tinkering by the Trump administration. (Tozzi and Dodge, 10/31)

The Wall Street Journal: Health Law Faces Its Toughest Stress Test Yet
This is also the first open-enrollment period under a Trump-administration change expanding access to cheaper plans that don’t cover the panoply of benefits mandated by the ACA. Those less-expensive plans can also deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Both of these change could weaken the exchanges where millions of Americans who don’t get insurance from an employer or government program go to obtain coverage. Health analysts say the moves will likely siphon off younger and healthier consumers who are needed to offset the health costs of older, sicker people remaining on the exchanges because they need more robust coverage. (Armour, 11/1)

Reuters: Privacy, Drug Price Bills Have A Fighting Chance In A Post-Election U.S. Congress
If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in next week’s elections and create a divided U.S. Congress, as they are seen as likely to do, the number of bills with a chance of passing falls dramatically. But two areas of general agreement between the Democrats, Republicans and President Donald Trump stand out as having a high potential of successful legislation: lowering prescription drug prices and new regulations to protect online privacy. (Bartz, 10/31)

The Washington Post: Fact Checker: GOP Hopefuls Say They Fight Insurance Companies, Just Like Obama
When Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008, he promised to force insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, contrasting his stance with Republican nominee John McCain, who the ad said would let insurance companies “continue to do as they please.” ... Now some Republicans are stealing Obama’s rhetoric and claiming they will do what the ACA – which remains largely intact, despite President Trump’s efforts – already does. It’s certainly an interesting turnaround. (Kessler, 11/1)

LAist: The Number Of Children Living On Skid Row Has Doubled Since Last Year
Specifically in downtown L.A.'s Skid Row, the number of homeless kids has doubled since last year. There are more than 300 children there, according to the most recent count from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). The number of "family units" experiencing homelessness in the neighborhood also rose dramatically, up 111 percent from 2017. (Duran, 10/31)

The Wall Street Journal: San Francisco Businesses Are Split On Tax Boost To Fight Homelessness
Christin Evans and Gwen Kaplan both run small businesses in neighborhoods they say have become overrun with homeless encampments. Like most San Francisco residents, they agree the problem has grown to an unprecedented scale, with homeless people taking drugs, using the streets as toilets and showing signs of mental breakdown. ... But Ms. Kaplan and Ms. Evans hold opposing views on Proposition C, a ballot measure Nov. 6 that would impose a tax increase on large corporations to raise money to assist the homeless. Recent polling showed San Franciscans evenly divided on the proposal. (Carlton, 11/1)

The Wall Street Journal: More U.S. Veterans Are Off The Streets
The number of homeless veterans declined in 2018 in response to long-established federal efforts and a push by dozens of local communities, according to the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs. Nationwide, the number of homeless veterans fell to approximately 38,000, according to an overall count of the homeless taken in January. That represented a 5.3% decline since last year and about half the 73,367 veterans tallied in 2009. Dozens of towns, cities and states have declared an end to vet homelessness in their communities. (Kesling, 11/1)

Sacramento Bee: Secret Report Says California’s Prison Care Is Deplorable 
A federal judge Wednesday released a scathing internal report about psychiatric care inside California’s prisons that accuses the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of providing care for inmates that is far below what has been mandated by decades of court fights. ... Lawyers for the state had fought to delay release of the document until an internal investigation could be done, but Mueller rejected that, and the document filed on the court docket Wednesday morning contains serious allegations about how inmates are being treated, including one incident where a psychotic inmate was not given medication and ended up ripping out her eye and swallowing it. (Stanton, 10/31)

The Associated Press: Whistleblower Says California Prison Officials Misled Judge
Top California corrections officials are misleading a federal judge and attorneys representing inmates about the quality of mental health care behind bars, according to a report released Wednesday that cites a case where a woman received care so poor she plucked out her eye and ate it. The whistleblower report by chief corrections psychiatrist Dr. Michael Golding that was made public by U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller says prison officials overruled psychiatrists and misrepresented how often inmates were receiving proper care. (Thompson, 10/31)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Federal Appeals Court Rules Against County Over Medical Exams Of Children — Again
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that medical exams of children taken into protective custody by San Diego County and done without a court order and parental consent violate the constitutional rights of parents and children — a potentially sweeping decision that could affect counties across California and other states. (Moran, 10/31)

In other state health care news --

Los Angeles Times: L.A. City Attorney Accuses E-Cigarette Companies Of Illegally Selling And Marketing To Minors 
Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer on Wednesday announced his office is seeking injunctions against three California-based electronic cigarette companies, alleging that they sell vaping products without proper age verification and market tobacco products to underage youths. Investigators at the city attorney’s office were able to purchase vaping devices and nicotine liquids from the companies online using the email accounts of fictitious minors and paying with gift cards, Feuer said. (Panzar, 10/31)

The California Health Report: State Made Billions In Questionable Medi-Cal Payments, Auditor Finds
California’s Department of Health Care Services paid at least $4 billion in Medi-Cal payments and claims for people who may have been ineligible for the health insurance plan, according to a state audit released this week. (Boyd-Barrett, 10/31)

Jefferson Public Radio: Sexual Orientation Changes Health Care Outcomes In California
The quality of health care, and health itself, is different between gay and straight populations in California.  And the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA is trying to figure out why. People in the LGBT community often have health insurance, but don't appear to seek out health care as much as straight people.  Surveys indicate discrimination is among the reasons. (Riley, Ehrlich and Baxter, 10/30)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Doors To Health Clinic's New Offices Open Nov. 6
North County Health Services is aiming to increase its patient volume by 30 percent at its new medical office opening in Ramona on Nov. 6. (Gallant, 10/31)

Capital Public Radio: Doctors Want To Prescribe Nature To Communities Of Color. Here's How California Might Help. 
California State Parks doesn’t collect data on visitor demographics, but the most recent statistics available — a National Parks survey from 2009 — found that roughly one-third of Hispanic and African-American respondents had visited a park in the last two years, compared to more than half of white respondents. Experts say this has major implications for health, and that kids who get outside the least have the highest rates of chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes and obesity. (Caiola, 10/31)

The New York Times: Training The Next Generation Of Doctors And Nurses
For decades, medical education has followed a timeworn path — heaps of book learning and lectures, then clinical rotations exposing students to patients. But as technology explodes into patient care (surgeons can preview operations using virtual 3-D images built from a patient’s scans), the gap between medical education and real-world care has “become a chasm,” said Marc Triola, director of N.Y.U. Langone’s Institute for Innovations in Medical Education, created in 2013 to address the issue. (Pappano, 10/31)

NPR: Millions Excluded By Language Barrier From Clinical Trials
According to interviews with doctors, government officials and pharmaceutical companies, few Alzheimer's studies include medical interpreters to help patients complete the specialized neuropsychological testing component required. One of the challenges is that clinicians and researchers have strongly cautioned against using interpreters to facilitate neuropsychological testing based on clinical experiences, observations and anecdotal evidence that they affect outcomes, according to a study published in Clinical Neuropsychology. (Eibelman, 10/31)

NPR: Cervical Cancer Patients Face Greater Risks With Minimally Invasive Surgery
A treatment for early stage cervical cancer that has rapidly gained acceptance in the United States turns out to be worse than standard surgery, according to two studies. The practice, now thrown into question, is called minimally invasive surgery. Instruments are threaded through small incisions, and surgeons use those to remove a diseased uterus. This technique has been growing in popularity since 2006 and has been widely adopted. (Harris, 10/31)

The Associated Press: Appendix Removal Is Linked To Lower Risk Of Parkinson's
Scientists have found a new clue that Parkinson’s disease may get its start not in the brain but in the gut — maybe in the appendix. People who had their appendix removed early in life had a lower risk of getting the tremor-inducing brain disease decades later, researchers reported Wednesday. (Neergaard, 10/31)

NPR: Why Are Premature Birth Rates On The Rise Again?
The rate of premature birth across the United States rose for the third year in a row, according to the annual premature birth report card from March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization that works to improve maternal and infant health. This comes after nearly a decade of decline from 2007 to 2015. In 2017, the premature birth rate was 9.93 percent of births, up slightly from 2016, when it was 9.85 percent. The report card draws from the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. (Chatterjee, 11/1)

California Healthline: Pricey Precision Medicine Often Financially Toxic For Cancer Patients
The high cost of cutting-edge tests and treatments is threatening to keep precision medicine — one of the most celebrated areas in cancer research — out of reach for many patients. Patients who pay for these new treatments on their own “could be in debt for decades,” said Dr. Scott Ramsey, director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research in Seattle. ... Precision medicine involves running expensive tests called genomic sequencing, which scan the DNA of tumors to find mutations that might be susceptible to available drugs. Although the field is relatively new, hundreds of thousands of cancer patients have had their tumors sequenced to identify cancer-related mutations, according to testing companies. (Szabo, 11/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Anthem Reports Earnings Growth, Raises Outlook
Anthem’s medical loss ratio, or the share of premiums spent on health costs, was slightly worse than analysts’ expectations for the third quarter, according to early notes from analysts. But the company also said the number was consistent with its expectations and improved its full-year MLR outlook. During the insurer’s earnings call, analysts asked about slightly higher costs it cited in Medicaid, and Ms. Boudreaux said the business was “performing solidly within our target margins” and should show “continued ongoing strong performance for the full year.” (Prang and Wilde Mathews, 10/31)

The Wall Street Journal: Glaxo’s Shingles Vaccine Gave Earnings A Shot In The Arm
Demand for Shingrix, which is aimed at people age 50 and over, has outpaced Glaxo’s expectations since it launched the vaccine late last year. The company says it now expects sales of £700 million to £750 million ($893 million to $957 million) this year, up from previous guidance of £600 million to £650 million. The vaccine protects against shingles, a disease that leads to a painful rash and that is caused by the reactivation of the chicken pox virus in people whose immune systems have weakened with age. Shingrix got a boost when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year gave the vaccine favored status over a rival, Merck & Co’s Zostavax. The CDC also recommended that adults who had previously received Zostavax should still receive Shingrix. (Roland, 10/31)

NPR: Groundskeeper Accepts Reduced $78 Million Award In Monsanto Cancer Suit
The groundskeeper who won a massive civil suit against Bayer's Monsanto claiming that the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer has agreed to accept $78 million, after a judge substantially reduced the jury's original $289 million award. Dewayne "Lee" Johnson, a Northern Californian groundskeeper and pest-control manager, was 42 when he developed a strange rash that would lead to a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August 2014. (Sullivan, 11/1)

The Wall Street Journal: EPA Allows Farmers To Keep Using Bayer’s Controversial Weedkiller
The Environmental Protection Agency will continue to allow farmers to spray crops with a controversial weedkiller, while tightening restrictions, the agency said. The EPA extended by two years its approval of XtendiMax, a version of the herbicide dicamba made by Bayer, which some farmers and researchers have blamed for damaging millions of acres of crops over the past two years. (Bunge, 10/31)

The Associated Press: Families Take Step Toward Suing EPA For Toxic Paint Stripper
The mothers of two men killed by a toxic paint stripper took a step toward suing the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday for failing to take quick action to remove the product from the market. The EPA had pledged in May, after then-Administrator Scott Pruitt met with families of two victims, to wrap up action “shortly” on proposed Obama-era regulations that would eliminate most allowable uses of the paint-stripping solvent methylene chloride. (Knickmeyer, 10/31)

USA Today: Seema Verma Tweet: 'Scariest Halloween Costume' Is Medicare For All
The head of Medicare and Medicaid was being criticized online Wednesday after she took a Halloween-inspired jab at Medicare for all on Twitter. Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, posted a photo of a man wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with "Medicare for All" Wednesday afternoon with the comment "this year’s scariest Halloween costume goes to..." ... Verma, in a statement to USA TODAY, said the post was a way to get attention and said critics weren't wrong, changing the U.S. healthcare system isn't a joke. (Hayes, 10/31)

The Washington Post: Trump Administration Allows Wisconsin To Question Medicaid Applicants About Risky Behavior
The Trump administration is allowing Wisconsin to become the first state to compel certain poor residents to disclose behavior such as drinking and exercise to qualify for Medicaid — and to charge more to people whose behavior the state judges as risky. Federal health officials, however, rebuffed an unprecedented effort by Wisconsin to impose drug tests on Medicaid applicants. The rejection placed a limit on the flexibility the administration has been urging states to embrace for the vast safety-net health insurance system, though illicit drug use can be an item in a health-risks questionnaire. (Goldstein, 10/31)

Stat: FDA Clears The First Consumer Genetic Test For How Well Your Medications May Work — With Caveats
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday cleared the first DNA test meant to be marketed directly to consumers to help them determine how well certain drugs may work for them. (Robbins, 10/31)

The Hill: Dem Senators Want Hearing On Funding For Detained Migrant Children
A group of Senate Democratic appropriators have asked their Republican colleagues to hold a hearing regarding how the Trump administration has been funding the detention of unaccompanied migrant children. (Weixel, 10/31)