Los Angeles Times: He Once Held The Job As A Republican, But Now Steve Poizner Is Making A No-Party Bid For California Insurance Commissioner
Eight years after losing a bitter Republican primary for governor and stepping away from California's political scene, Steve Poizner said Monday that he will run again for the elected office he gave up in that contest — state insurance commissioner. This time, he won't run as a Republican. ... Politically speaking, Poizner is part of the answer to a lingering piece of California electoral trivia. Poizner and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were the last two Republicans to win a statewide race. In the 12 years since those victories, the GOP's share of the state's registered electorate has plummeted. Party loyalists have largely embraced statewide candidates with positions that polls find are to the political right of a majority of California voters. (Myers, 2/12)

KQED: Bill Aims To Help Homeless Suffering From Severe Mental Illness, Drug Addiction
The bill intends to expand and strengthen California’s conservatorship laws that are currently limited to seniors vulnerable to abuse as well as people who are “gravely disabled” or have severe cognitive limitations. SB 1045 would give counties another option to address homeless individuals known as “frequent fliers” who are in and out of jail, emergency rooms and other government services. (Shafer, 2/12)

Meanwhile, in other mental health news —

KPBS: Report: California Facing Major Shortage Of Behavioral Health Professionals 
A new report from UC San Francisco's Healthforce Center finds if current trends continue, California will have 41 percent fewer psychiatrists than needed, and 11 percent fewer psychologists than needed by 2028. The aging of California behavioral health workforce is a major factor. (Goldberg, 2/13)

Sacramento Bee: As Opioid Epidemic Rages, California Database Still Not Ready
As the opioid crisis rages across the country and in rural California, the California Department of Justice has not yet certified a database designed to prevent doctors from overprescribing the drugs, angering consumer and law enforcement groups that say it hurts efforts to prevent opioid abuse. The current timeline means doctors will not have to check the database until at least January 2019. (Kobin, 2/12)

In related news —

Capital Public Radio: Native American Treatment Center Faces Lawsuit From Yolo County 
The federal Indian Health Service wants to put an adolescent rehab program on farmland northwest of Davis, but Yolo County officials say the current proposal is a recipe for traffic disaster. The $20 million live-in facility would treat roughly 100 substance-addicted American Indian and Alaska Native youth each year. (Caiola, 2/12)

Los Angeles Times: Drivers Who Get Stoned On 4/20 Are Just As Dangerous As Drivers Who Get Drunk On Super Bowl Sunday
Here's a pro tip from a couple of doctors: Be sure to make special plans on April 20. That date, of course, is the unofficial holiday devoted to celebrating all things marijuana. (You might know it better as "4/20.") The two physicians — John Staples of the University of British Columbia and Donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto — aren't asking that you honor marijuana's medicinal properties by experiencing them directly. Rather, they're warning you to be on alert for others who do — and then get behind the wheel while they're still under the influence. (Kaplan, 2/12)

In other news —

KQED News: Can Cannabis Save Us From The Opioid Crisis?
Have California’s medical marijuana dispensaries helped ease the state’s opioid crisis? Several studies have found lower rates of opioid-related overdoses in states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. (Replogle, 2/12)

Sacramento Bee: California Has Legal Marijuana - Just Not Many Places To Legally Smoke It
When California voters 15 months ago passed Proposition 64 – formally known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act – it didn’t create a lot of options for where people 21 and over can legally consume pot. ...While there is no statewide registry of lounges, people in the cannabis industry say they know only of a cluster in the Bay Area – eight in San Francisco and one in Oakland. (Branan, 2/12)

San Jose Mercury News: Why California's Cannabis Taxes Are Much More Than Wine And Beer, But Less Than Cigarettes
While marijuana taxes stand alone in the world of so-called “sin taxes” because they vary among cities and counties, an analysis by this news organization found the cumulative tax on legal weed is more than triple the tax on wine and beer, which is typically about a dime on the dollar. For cigarettes, on the other hand, the total tax rate is more than 80 percent. (Krieger, 2/12)

Long Beach Press-Telegram: Molina Healthcare Reports $512-Million Loss For 2017
Molina Healthcare reported a $512-million loss for 2017, a year when the firm changed its top leadership and underwent a company-wide reorganization. ...The company attributed its 2017 losses to such factors as the costs of its restructuring and the federal government’s termination of subsidy payments that executives believe are still owed to the firm. (Edwards, 2/12)

In other news from across the state —

KPCC: Ordinances Aim To Speed Up Homeless Housing Construction 
Two ordinances before a city council committee Tuesday aim at making it easier to erect temporary and permanent housing for homeless people in Los Angeles. While one would ease the process for motels looking to convert into homeless shelters or affordable apartments, the other would eliminate some of the barriers for new construction of multiunit buildings to house L.A.'s poor people and formerly homeless individuals and family.  (Palta, 2/13)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Alzheimer's Educational Tour To Kick Off In San Diego On Feb. 20 
A free, 15-city tour that aims to broaden the public’s knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease kicks off in San Diego on Feb. 20. Presented by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the one-day symposium, which is scheduled for the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina on Harbor Island, includes expert presentations on the current state of Alzheimer’s research and information for caregivers who have a loved one suffering from the disease. (Sisson, 2/12)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Rady Children's Institute Sets Guinness World Record 
It took 13 years to build the first full set of genetic blueprints for the human race by sequencing the DNA inside our cells that governs everything from eye color to risk of debilitating disease. But a team at Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, working closely with homegrown sequencing sensation Illumina Inc., just proved it’s possible to get the job done in just 19.5 hours. On Feb. 3, the Guinness Book of World Records documented the technological feat, which could provide quicker diagnoses for kids with puzzling and immediately life-threatening illnesses and hasten the inevitable moment when genetic analysis enters the mainstream. (Sisson, 2/12)

San Jose Mercury News: Google Points Abortion-Seekers Toward Anti-Abortion Clinics
Women and girls using Google to find an abortion provider in the Bay Area may end up in the hands of an anti-abortion operation that doesn’t terminate pregnancies and instead pushes clients to give birth. ...The serving up of anti-abortion results that are opposite to the actual goal of the search is most pronounced when a user goes to Google Maps after searching for an abortion provider. (Baron, 2/12)

The New York Times: He Took A Drug To Prevent AIDS. Then He Couldn’t Get Disability Insurance.
Three years ago, Dr. Philip J. Cheng, a urology resident at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, nicked himself while preparing an H.I.V.-positive patient for surgery. Following hospital protocol, he took a one-month course of Truvada, a cocktail of two anti-H.I.V. drugs, to prevent infection. Later, because he was an unattached gay man, he decided to keep taking Truvada to protect himself from getting H.I.V. through sex. (McNeil, 2/12)

In other news —

The Associated Press: Can Gene Therapy Be Harnessed To Fight The AIDS Virus?
For more than a decade, the strongest AIDS drugs could not fully control Matt Chappell's HIV infection. Now his body controls it by itself, and researchers are trying to perfect the gene editing that made this possible. Scientists removed some of his blood cells, disabled a gene to help them resist HIV, and returned these "edited" cells to him in 2014. So far, it has given the San Francisco man the next best thing to a cure. (2/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Amazon’s Latest Ambition? To Be A Major Hospital Supplier
Amazon.com Inc. is pushing to turn its nascent medical-supplies business into a major supplier to U.S. hospitals and outpatient clinics that could compete with incumbent distributors of items from gauze to hip implants. Amazon has invited hospital executives to its Seattle headquarters on several occasions, most recently in late January, to solicit information about the sector and sound out ideas for expanding the company’s business-to-business marketplace, Amazon Business, into one where hospitals could shop to stock outpatient locations, operating suites and emergency rooms, according to hospital executives who attended the meetings. (Evans and Stevens, 2/13)

In other health industry news —

Bloomberg: A Long Era Of Low Health Care Inflation May Be Coming To End
Hospital prices increased 2.2 percent in December, the fastest rate in four years, according to an analysis by Altarum, a nonprofit health-care research organization. The group analyzes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources to estimate the underlying prices that health plans and consumers pay for medical goods and services. While overall medical inflation was restrained last year, the report warns that “we could very well be at the cusp” of a return to a more typical pattern where increases in health-care prices outpace the broader inflation rate. (Tozzi, 2/12)

The New York Times: White House Proposes $4.4 Trillion Budget That Adds $7 Trillion To Deficits
President Trump sent Congress a $4.4 trillion budget proposal on Monday outlining steep cuts to domestic programs, large increases in military spending and a ballooning federal deficit that illustrates how far Republicans have strayed from their longtime embrace of balanced budgets. The blueprint has little to no chance of being enacted as written and amounts to a vision statement by Mr. Trump, who as a businessman once called himself the “king of debt” and has overseen a federal spending spree that will earn him that title in an entirely different arena. (Davis, 2/12)

The Associated Press: Trump's High-Spending Budget Reverses Longtime GOP Dogma
Trump's budget revived his calls for big cuts to domestic programs that benefit the poor and middle class, such as food stamps, housing subsidies and student loans. Retirement benefits would remain mostly untouched by Trump's plan, as he has pledged, though Medicare providers would absorb about $500 billion in cuts — a nearly 6 percent reduction. Some beneficiaries in Social Security's disability program would have to re-enter the workforce under proposed changes to eligibility rules. (2/13)

The Associated Press: Winners And Losers Under Medicare Drug Plan In Trump Budget
Some Medicare beneficiaries would face higher prescription drug costs under President Donald Trump's budget even as the sickest patients save thousands of dollars, a complex trade-off that may make it harder to sell Congress on the plan in an election year. In budget documents, the administration said its proposals strike a balance between improving the popular "Part D" prescription benefit for the 42 million seniors enrolled, while correcting design flaws that increase program costs for taxpayers. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is expected to testify on the proposal later this week in Congress. (2/13)

The Washington Post: Trump Wants To Overhaul America’s Safety Net With Giant Cuts To Housing, Food Stamps And Health Care
The spending plan reaches beyond the White House’s own power over the government social safety net and presumes lawmakers will overhaul long-standing entitlement programs for the poor in ways beyond what Congress so far has been willing to do. The changes call on lawmakers to eliminate the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and transform the rest of that program into a system of capped payments to states; convert food assistance into a hybrid of commodity deliveries and traditional cash benefits; and expand requirements that low-income people work to qualify for federal assistance. (Jan, Dewey, Goldstein and Stein, 2/12)

The Hill: Trump Budget Seeks Savings Through ObamaCare Repeal
The White House budget for fiscal 2019 seeks major savings by repealing ObamaCare and endorsed a Senate GOP bill as the best way to do so. “The Budget supports a two-part approach to repealing and replacing Obamacare, starting with enactment of legislation modeled closely after the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson (GCHJ) bill as soon as possible,” the White House said in its budget request. (Weixel, 2/12)

The Hill: Trump Releases Budget Proposal For Health Department 
The Department of Health and Human Services would receive $95.4 billion under the budget proposal released by the Trump administration Monday. Under the proposal, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would face a cut but the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration would see increases. (Hellmann, 2/12)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Eyes Role Of Middlemen In Drug Price Fight
On the surface, the plans to lower drug prices in the Trump Administration’s 2019 budget shouldn’t cause much pain to the health-care industry. A closer look shows where policymakers are hoping to get deeper cost savings. In the 2019 budget released Monday, the White House unveiled a series of plans to lower drug prices, including making certain generic drugs free and capping out of pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries. (Grant, 2/12)

Los Angeles Times: White House Releases Budget, Forecasts A Decade Of Mounting Debt
His budget would slash almost $700 billion in federal healthcare spending that helps low- and moderate-income Americans who rely on insurance marketplaces created by the 2010 healthcare law. As Republicans proposed last year, the plan would replace much existing healthcare spending with grants to states, allowing each one to craft its own health program. Similar proposals last year failed in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has indicated that the chamber won't consider another run at Obamacare this year. (Parsons, 2/12)

The New York Times: What’s In The White House Budget Request?
The president’s budget singles out abortion providers and would prohibit Health and Human Services funding, including money used for family planning, from going to any clinic or health care facility that also offers abortion services. Though the language is broadly written, its intended target is Planned Parenthood, which relies on government funding to offer a variety of services to women other than abortion. The budget would help achieve the longstanding goal of social conservatives to cut off Planned Parenthood from federal assistance. (2/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Pick For Indian Health Services Cites Business Savvy, But Financial History Show Struggles
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the troubled Indian Health Service left his latest employer in a state of financial disarray, filed for personal bankruptcy and had liens imposed on one of his own businesses for failing to pay federal taxes, according to public documents and interviews. The nominee, Robert Weaver, a member of the Quapaw tribe of Oklahoma, has cited his private-sector business acumen and leadership of several small businesses as key qualifications to lead the agency and its roughly $6 billion budget. (Frosch and Weaver, 2/13)

Politico: Trump's HHS Worked With Conservative Group On Planned Parenthood Policy
A conservative legal organization worked with the Trump administration to make it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood, according to documents obtained by congressional Democrats and shared with POLITICO. HHS last month told states they no longer have to comply with Obama administration policy that made it difficult for states to exclude the women's health group from their Medicaid programs — an announcement timed to the March of Life anti-abortion rally. HHS received a draft legal analysis from the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom a week before the announcement, according to House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings. (Haberkorn, 2/12)

And in other national health care news —

Stat: NIH Funding Contributed To 210 Approved Drugs In Recent Years, Study Says
Anew study makes a strong case for the importance of government support for basic research: Federally funded studies contributed to the science that underlies every one of the 210 new drugs approved between 2010 and 2016. Researchers at Bentley University scoured millions of research papers for mentions of those 210 new molecular entities, or NMEs, as well as studies on their molecular targets. Then, they looked to see which of those studies had received any funding from the National Institutes of Health. (Thielking, 2/12)

Stat: Risky Tactic, Desperate Need: Trial To Test Brain Implants For Opioid Addiction
The arsenal of therapies available to combat opioid addiction has expanded beyond pills and shots to include over-the-ear electrodes and virtual reality headsets. But an upcoming clinical trial could push the boundaries of addiction treatment further, and by a more invasive means than any therapy currently embraced by medical experts. The therapy, called deep brain stimulation, requires electrodes to be implanted into the brain to regulate activity in the brain’s neurons, much like a pacemaker does to the heart. Deep brain stimulation is currently used to treat tremors related to Parkinson’s disease, and is being tested on patients diagnosed with a variety of brain disorders. (Blau, 2/13)

Stateline: Why Police Backing Is Key To Needle Exchanges
Until the opioid epidemic began seeping into nearly every city and town in the country, the idea of a Main Street storefront offering free needles, alcohol wipes and small metal cookers for heroin users was unthinkable in a conservative Southern city like this one. But these days, most of the roughly 100,000 residents of this historic port on the Cape Fear River are painfully aware that their community has a serious drug problem. Syringes carpet sections of public walkways, drug users congregate in vacant lots, and an increasing number of residents are attending the funerals of friends and family members who have died of an opioid overdose. (Vetal, 2/13)