Los Angeles Times: Number Of Uninsured Children Climbs, Reversing More Than A Decade Of Progress, Report Finds
The number of children in the United States without health insurance increased last year for the first time in more than a decade, according to a new report that highlights potentially worrisome backsliding in pediatric care. The erosion in health insurance came despite a robust economy, which in the past has helped fuel expansions in coverage. It likely reflects a number of steps taken by the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress that have targeted safety net programs such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program known as CHIP, note the authors of the new report from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. (Levey, 11/28)

California Healthline: Under Trump, Number Of Uninsured Kids Rose For First Time This Decade
In California, 301,000 children went without insurance in 2017, up slightly from 300,000 the year before, the data show. The overall uninsured rate for people of all ages — which plummeted from 2013 to 2016 following the health law’s implementation — remained unchanged at 8.8 percent last year. (Galewitz, 11/29)

FiveThirtyEight: California’s Wildfires Could Mean A Generation Of Lung Problems
The current batch of California wildfires has reminded us of the acute short-term dangers of smoke inhalation. But the danger doesn’t stop there. (Koerth-Baker, 11/20)

Reveal: The Smoke’s Gone, But Hearts And Lungs Still May Be In Danger Months After Wildfires
Three to five months after the 37,000-acre Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma valleys in October 2017, the region’s emergency rooms treated about 20 percent more patients for respiratory and cardiac ailments compared with previous years, according to the analysis, which used state data. At the time, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive in California history, killing 22 people and destroying nearly 6,000 structures. (Glantz and Neilson, 11/28)

Ventura County Star: Wildfires Bring Medicare Extension To Area Residents
An extension triggered by the California wildfires allows people covered by Medicare to make enrollment decisions and other coverage changes until March 31. The extension, announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, pushes back a deadline that would normally fall on Dec. 7. It means area residents affected by Woolsey and Hill fires can switch, enroll or drop out of Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare Part D offerings. (11/28)

Sacramento Bee: No New Dead Found In Camp Fire; Paradise Residents May Be Allowed To Return In Coming Days
For the third day in a row, Butte County searchers reported Wednesday they found no new human remains in areas burned by the Camp Fire, prompting the county’s sheriff to say he is hoping the death toll has reached its peak. That number, 88, is the highest by far in California history from a wildfire. (Bizjak, 11/28)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: More People Getting Flu Shots This Year After Deadly 2017 Season 
Flu vaccination across San Diego County is off to a smashing start this year. Through last week, local health providers reported giving 655,823 doses, nearly 30 percent more than had been administered by the same week last year. According to county records, nearly 150,000 more people across the region have gotten their flu shots so far this year than did in the same period last year. In just a few months, local health care workers have already given 85 percent as many vaccines as they gave during the entire 2017-2018 flu season, which contributed to the deaths of 342 people in San Diego County. (Sisson, 11/28)

In other public health news —

Sacramento Bee: California Highway Camps Dangerous For Homeless, Workers
All over the state, the department is clearing as many as 40 camps every day along highways and underpasses, aiming to keep roads free of hazards and to clean up sites that can collect trash and hazardous waste. The task sounds straightforward, but the program grew dangerous and expensive as the state’s homeless population swelled since the recession. (Tracy and Ashton, 11/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Supervisor Wants Mark Zuckerberg’s Name Removed From Public Hospital
Citing Facebook’s mishandling of user privacy and its use of an opposition research firm to discredit critics, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin is pushing to remove Mark Zuckerberg’s name from the city’s public hospital. The hospital was renamed Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in 2015 after the Facebook CEO and his wife contributed $75 million to the hospital’s foundation. (Ho, 11/28)

KQED: S.F. Supervisor Pushes To Wipe Zuckerberg's Name From City Hospital
“I really want the city to reassess the value of giving up these naming rights and the message this sends relative to our role as stewards of the public trust,” Peskin told what appeared to be a generally receptive board. Zuckerberg has been under fire over his company's failure to combat fake news and Russian political meddling, particularly as it played out in the 2016 election. He has also been sharply criticized for Facebook's mishandling of user privacy data. (Corral and Green, 11/28)

San Francisco Chronicle: Migraine Patients’ Coverage Headache: FDA OK Doesn’t Mean Insurance Will Pay 
Patients are learning a hard lesson in drug development: Just because the FDA says something is ready for wide release doesn’t mean it’s cost-effective from an insurer’s point of view. And if it’s not considered cost-effective, the insurer won’t pay for it — which is what is happening with Aimovig and the other new drugs. (Allday, 11/25)

Capital Public Radio: University Of The Pacific Helps Medicare Users Save On Drug Costs
The Medicare open enrollment period for ends on December 7. That’s the last chance for people who want to reevaluate their health care and prescription drug coverage. University of the Pacific Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has held clinics to help patients pick the right Medicare Part D drug plan. (Ruyak, 11/28)

In more news from around California —

San Francisco Chronicle: Return Possible For Oakland Nurse Whose Deportation Split Family
A woman whose case drew national attention last year when immigration officials tore her from her children and her job as a nurse in Oakland and deported her to Mexico has a chance to beat the odds and return to the Bay Area, thanks to a lottery drawing and a recommendation from a U.S. consular officer. The final decision, though, is in the hands of a Trump administration immigration agency. (Egelko, 11/28)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Sharp Healthcare Hires St. Louis Executive To Be Its New CEO 
Eight months after it started looking for its next leader, Sharp HealthCare’s board of directors voted Wednesday to hire an executive from St. Louis to replace retiring chief executive Mike Murphy.The board last named a CEO in 1996, when it chose Murphy to run what has become the region’s largest health care system with four full-service hospitals, three specialty hospitals, 18,000 employees and revenue that has grown from less than $800 million to more than $3.4 billion. (Sisson, 11/28)

Politico: Trump May Finally Be Undermining Obamacare
There has been a steep drop in Obamacare insurance numbers, halfway through the sign-up season for 2019, raising concerns that the Trump administration’s controversial policy changes are undermining the marketplaces. The 9.2 percent drop to roughly 100,000 sign-ups per day has surprised close observers of the Obamacare markets, who expected the number of customers to remain fairly stable even after Republicans eliminated the unpopular individual mandate penalties for being uninsured. Premium hikes were fairly low in most states for 2019, and many parts of the country saw an increase in consumer choice as more health plans participated in what they now see as a more profitable, stabilizing market. (Demko, 11/28)

The Hill: Top Dems Blame 'Sabotage' As ObamaCare Enrollment Slows 
Top House Democrats are blaming President Trump for ObamaCare signup numbers that so far are lower than last year. "While there are still two weeks remaining in Open Enrollment, these lagging numbers show that Republicans' sabotage of our nation's health care system is working,” said Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the incoming chairmen of the three committees overseeing the Affordable Care Act. (Sullivan, 11/28)

The Associated Press: Suicide, At 50-Year Peak, Pushes Down US Life Expectancy
Suicides and drug overdoses pushed up U.S. deaths last year, and drove a continuing decline in how long Americans are expected to live. Overall, there were more than 2.8 million U.S. deaths in 2017, or nearly 70,000 more than the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government began counting more than a century ago. (11/29)

Politico: Drug Overdoses And Suicides Fuel Drop In U.S. Life Expectancy
Although the U.S. has struggled with a drug crisis for years, overdoses have only recently become a major driver of the overall mortality rate because decreases in other causes of death, like heart disease, have leveled off after long-term declines. "In those previous years, the increase in overdose deaths offset the declines in heart disease, but now those have flattened out so that's no longer the case," said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. (Ehley, 11/29)

The Hill: Dem Single-Payer Fight Set To Shift To Battle Over Medicare ‘Buy-In’ 
Momentum is building among House Democrats for a more moderate alternative to single-payer health-care legislation. The legislation, which would allow people aged 50 to 65 to buy Medicare, is being championed by Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who supported House Minority Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker in exchange for a commitment to work on his bill when Democrats take control of the House early next year. (Weixel, 11/29)

The Hill: Dem Senator Murray Calls For Trying Again On Bipartisan ObamaCare Fix 
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Wednesday called for reviving bipartisan efforts to reach a deal to fix ObamaCare after an agreement she was part of collapsed last year. “Mr. Chairman, I'm really hopeful that we can revive discussions in the new Congress and find a way past the ideological standoffs of the past,” Murray said to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), her Republican partner in forging last year’s deal, at a hearing on health care costs. (Sullivan, 11/28)

In other national health care news —

The Hill: Conservative Groups Write Letter Opposing Trump Move To Lower Drug Prices 
A coalition of 55 conservative groups has written a letter calling on the Trump administration to withdraw a proposal to lower drug prices, warning of creating “price controls.” The letter from the groups represents a break between President Trump and conservative allies over the drug pricing proposal unveiled in October, which departs from the traditional Republican position on drug prices. (Sullivan, 11/28)

The Wall Street Journal: CVS Completes $70 Billion Acquisition Of Aetna
CVS Health Corp. completed its nearly $70 billion acquisition of Aetna Inc., forging a new industry giant and starting the clock ticking on ambitious goals of curbing health-care costs and improving consumers’ experience. The combined company faces significant challenges in bringing together its diverse set of health assets, including CVS’s sprawling network of pharmacies, a pharmacy-benefit manager and Aetna’s employer insurance, Medicare and Medicaid managed-care businesses. Aetna will be operated as a stand-alone unit, and CVS will continue using the brand in reference to its insurance products. (Wilde Mathews and Al-Muslim, 11/28)

The Associated Press Fact Check: Entire Trump Tweet On Immigrant Aid Is Wrong
President Donald Trump is spreading a false claim from supporters that people who are in the United States illegally receive more in federal assistance than the average American gets in Social Security benefits. Everything about the tweet he passed on to his 56 million listed Twitter followers Tuesday is wrong. (11/29)

The Associated Press: Opioid Case Has New Complication: Babies Born In Withdrawal
The long-running federal court case seeking to hold drugmakers responsible for the nation’s opioid crisis has a new complication: How does it deal with claims covering the thousands of babies born to addicts? Attorneys representing the children and their guardians want their claims separated from the federal case in Cleveland that involves hundreds of local governments and other entities such as hospitals. They will argue that Thursday before a federal judicial panel in New York. (Mulvihill, 11/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Amazon Makes Inroads Selling Medical Supplies To The Sick
Amazon.com Inc. is selling medical products to patients based on one of the most private corners of the health system: electronic medical records. A growing number of doctors around the U.S. can direct a patient to Amazon to buy blood-pressure cuffs, slings and other supplies via an app embedded in the patient’s private medical record. Hospitals that use the app say the goal is to replace the handwritten shopping lists doctors often hand people, which are easy to lose, and to spare frazzled patients lengthy searches through pharmacy shelves. (Evans, 11/29)

The Associated Press: Younger School Entry Could Set Stage For ADHD Diagnosis
The youngest children in kindergarten are more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in early grades, a study shows, an intriguing finding for parents on the fence about when to start their child in school. The study found younger students, especially boys, are also more likely to be started on medications for ADHD and kept on the drugs longer than the oldest children. The medications are generally safe, but can have harmful side effects. (11/28)

The New York Times: Study Warns Of Cascading Health Risks From The Changing Climate
Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat. These are the stark findings of a wide-ranging scientific report that lays out the growing risks of climate change for human health and predicts that cascading hazards could soon face millions more people in rich and poor countries around the world. (Sengupta and Pierre-Louis, 11/28)

The Washington Post: Scientists Call For A Halt To Genetically Editing Embryos, Rebuke Chinese Researcher
“At this summit we heard an unexpected and deeply disturbing claim that human embryos had been edited and implanted, resulting in a pregnancy and the birth of twins,” said the summit’s organizing committee, which called for independent verification of He’s claims that have so far not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. “Even if the modifications are verified, the procedure was irresponsible and failed to conform with international norms,” the organizers said in the summit’s highly anticipated consensus statement that is usually seen as setting the tone and direction for the fast-changing field. (Johnson and Shih, 11/29)