Los Angeles Times: More Than 300,000 Signed Up For Obamacare After Trump Was Elected
Signups for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act continued to surge this month amid anxiety about the future of the law under President-elect Donald Trump, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The flood of people signing up since enrollment began Nov. 1 surpassed 1 million on Saturday, outpacing enrollment from last year, new data show. (Levey, 11/16)

The Associated Press: Early Sign-Ups For Health Care Law Are Steady, But No Surge
A little more than 1 million people renewed health coverage or signed up for the first time through HealthCare.gov around the start of open enrollment, which coincided with a GOP election sweep likely to scramble President Barack Obama's signature law. The figures released Wednesday by the Obama administration represent steady sign-ups but no enrollment surge so far. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 11/16)

San Diego Union-Times: Covered California Director Urges Enrollees To Ignore Trump-Caused Uncertainty
Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, is at a crossroads brought about by President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to repeal at least parts of the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare pays income-based subsidies to 87% of the 1.3 million Californians currently covered by plans sold through the exchange. Elimination of those payments could very well lead to mass cancellations by people no longer able to afford their insurance policies. (Sisson, 11/16)

The Bakersfield Californian: Qualify For The State Health Exchange? It's Time To Enroll 
If you do or can get your health insurance through Covered California — and about 19,000 of you in Kern County currently do — don’t worry about last week’s election. Just enroll. That’s the message from Peter Lee, executive director of the state health insurance exchange, which is in the middle of open enrollment. Yes, President-elect Donald Trump wants to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which resulted in the Covered California exchange. But change never happens in Washington, D.C., overnight — including any overhaul of Obamacare, Lee said. (Bedell, 11/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Theranos Whistleblower Shook The Company—And His Family
After working at Theranos Inc. for eight months, Tyler Shultz decided he had seen enough. On April 11, 2014, he emailed company founder Elizabeth Holmes to complain that Theranos had doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks. The reply was withering. Ms. Holmes forwarded the email to Theranos President Sunny Balwani, who belittled Mr. Shultz’s grasp of basic mathematics and his knowledge of laboratory science, and then took a swipe at his relationship with George Shultz, the former secretary of state and a Theranos director. (Carreyrou, 11/16)

Capital Public Radio/KXJZ: The Reasoning Behind Prop. 61's Rejection By Californians
Californians rejected Proposition 61 this November, which would have mandated the state pay the same amount for prescription drugs that the Department of Veteran Affairs pays. The campaigns supporting and opposing this measure were the most expensive in California history, with the pharmaceutical industry spending $109 million. However, proponents had high profile figures like Bernie Sanders stumping on the ground for weeks prior to the election. (11/16)

Los Angeles Times: Star-Shaped Drug Dispenser Stays In Gut To Deliver Medication For Weeks
Wrought in metal and wielded by a ninja, one star-shaped device can deliver swift, silent death. Now, researchers have unveiled a star-shaped device designed to deliver health for weeks at a time. A team of Boston-based engineers and physicians on Wednesday demonstrated a first: a multi-pronged drug-delivery mechanism capable of withstanding the tumultuous and corrosive forces that prevail in the human gut for as long as two weeks. (Healy, 11/16)

Capital Public Radio/KXJZ: Intensive Mental Health Treatments: Options Of Last Resort 
Researchers disagree as to whether ECT affects the neurotransmitters or the hormone regulators in the brain. By creating a seizure, a small electricity current can "re-set" the frontal lobe of the brain. The treatment has changed little in the last 80 years. But now, the patient or a judge must first give consent. Also, the amount of electricity delivered is limited and the patient is under anesthesia during treatment. (Moffitt, 11/17)

Los Angeles Times: There's Another Type Of Rural/Urban Divide In America: Teens Having Babies
The teen birth rate in America’s small towns is 63% higher than in its biggest cities, a new government report reveals. In 2015, there were 18.9 births for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19 living in counties with large urban areas, according to a report published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That compares with 30.9 births per 1,000 women in the same age group who lived in rural counties, the report said. (Kaplan, 11/16)

In other public health news —

KPBS Public Media: Drug Use Among Men Booked In County Jails Hits 16-Year High, Report Finds 
Illegal drug use among men in San Diego County jails was at a 16-year high last year, with more than three-quarters of the inmates testing positive, according to a report released today by the San Diego Association of Governments. The annual substance abuse monitoring report released by the SANDAG Criminal Justice Research Division showed that 76 percent of male inmates tested positive for an illegal drug in 2015 -- 8 percent higher than in 2014. (11/16)

KPBS Public Media: Report Explores How Doctors Can Help Patients Fight Food Insecurity 
The San Diego Hunger Coalition released a report last month on how doctors can screen patients to find out if they’re struggling to put food on the table and connect them to food assistance programs. For its research, the Hunger Coalition launched five pilot programs over the last two years in distinct health care settings throughout the county. (Cabrera and Cavanaugh, 11/16)

Ventura County Star: Rules Limiting Pesticides Near Schools Debated In Oxnard
About 175 people attended a hearing this week in Oxnard to tell state officials what they think about regulations that would limit how growers use pesticides near schools. Farmworkers and their allies, worried about the impact pesticides could have on children's health, said the regulations don't go far enough. "We get that pesticides need to be used to improve production, but we need to find a balance between that and our health," said Felix Cortes, representing MICOP, the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project. "Because it’s the health of our community, the health of our kids that's being put at risk." (Moore, 11/16)

In other health care news from across the state —

KPBS Public Media: San Diego Scheduled To Spray For Mosquitoes In Spring Valley 
San Diego County Vector Control crews will hand-spray a neighborhood in Spring Valley on Thursday in an attempt to kill invasive Aedes mosquitoes to keep them from potentially spreading the Zika virus. After more mosquitoes were found in the vicinity of an individual who contracted Zika while traveling abroad, county crews went door-to-door through the neighborhood Tuesday to notify people of the planned hand-spraying. (11/16)

The Mercury News: Marijuana Use Still Prohibited On Stanford Campus
Adults can now legally smoke and grow marijuana for recreational use in California, but Stanford University students won’t be allowed to light up on campus. The possession, use and growth of marijuana will remain prohibited on Stanford property, including off-campus housing, despite the passage of Proposition 64 in last week’s election, campus officials said in a statement Monday. (Lee, 11/16)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Brandon Maxfield, Child Shooting Victim Who Took Down Defective Gun Maker, Dies At 29
A Willits man who gained national recognition as a teen for shutting down the gunmaker responsible for manufacturing a defective pistol that paralyzed him in an accident at the age of 7, has died. Brandon Maxfield, 29, died Nov. 13 from complications of his paralysis, said Mike Harkins, a friend, family spokesman and author of a book about Maxfield and his legal case against Bryco Arms, a manufacturer of cheap firearms. Maxfield’s long legal fight against the gunmaker began in 1994 after a babysitter accidentally shot him with a Bryco Arms Model 38 pistol owned by his father. (Anderson, 11/16)

Politico: Republicans Aim To Start Obamacare Repeal In January
Republicans on Capitol Hill are growing confident that they can begin to repeal Obamacare once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, along with a pledge to replace it later. “We have an Obamacare emergency right now,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee. “I think we could move forward in January on some aspects of repeal but we need to make sure that we are helping people and that we do no harm.” (Haberkorn, 11/16)

In other national health care news —

ProPublica: High-Dollar Prescribers Proliferate In Medicare’s Drug Program
The number of doctors who each prescribe millions of dollars of medications annually in Medicare’s drug program has soared, driven by expensive hepatitis C treatments and rising drug prices overall, federal data obtained by ProPublica shows. The number of providers who topped the $5 million mark for prescriptions increased more than tenfold, from 41 in 2011 to 514 in 2015. The number of prescribers—mostly physicians but also nurse practitioners–exceeding $10 million in drug costs jumped from two to 70 over the same time period, according to the data. (Ornstein and Jones, 11/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Patients May Still Get A ‘Surprise’ Bill After An In-Network ER Visit, Study Finds
Patients who get emergency care at a hospital in their insurance network have nearly a 1 in 4 chance of being treated by an out-of-network ER physician who may send a “surprise” bill, according to an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, by two Yale University economists, is one of the first to quantify the surprise-bill issue that has caused patient uproar and stoked friction between ER doctors and insurers. (Beck, 11/16)

Reuters: Surgeon General Calls For Action To Fight Drug, Alcohol Abuse
The U.S. Surgeon General issued a call to action on Thursday to end what he said was a public health crisis of drug and alcohol addiction that is both underappreciated and undertreated. Dr. Vivek Murthy issued the first-ever Surgeon General's report on substance abuse and said he hopes it will galvanize work on the issue the way a similar report 50 years ago sparked decades of effort to combat smoking. (Clarke, 11/16)

Modern Healthcare: Commonwealth Fund Says Americans Are Sicker, Skip Care More Than Citizens Of Other High-Income Nations 
Despite major coverage expansions under the Affordable Care Act, Americans are sicker and have more trouble affording care than 10 other high-income countries, a new survey shows. Moreover, almost half of the poorest U.S. adults can't get the care they need, and many resort to the emergency room for treatment, according to the Commonwealth Fund study.  The non-partisan group surveyed almost 27,000 adults across 11 high-income countries about their health and experience with their country's healthcare system. The nations surveyed included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Livingston, 11/16)

The Associated Press: Drug Prices Don’t Budge Even After Pressure From Congress
Congress’s routine of publicly shaming drug company executives over high prices works no better than a placebo: It may make some people feel better, but it doesn’t treat the problem. In the last two years, House and Senate committees issued more than a dozen subpoenas to price-hiking drugmakers, collecting hundreds of thousands of documents and berating executives for more than 16 hours of public hearings. (Perrone, 11/16)