The San Jose Mercury News: California Legislature Poised To Pass Replacement Tax On Health Care Plans
After months of uncertainty, the Legislature appears poised to approve a tax on health care plans that would generate $1.27 billion annually and could substantially boost funding for developmentally disabled Californians for the first time in more than a decade. (Calefati and Seipel, 2/14)

The Sacramento Bee: Fact Check: When Is A Tax Hike Really A Tax Hike?
With legislative votes possible as early as this week on extending and expanding a tax on health care plans, some Republican lawmakers and others have stepped up their criticism, calling the proposal a tax hike. The label carries weight because the measure requires votes from Democrats and at least some Republicans to pass. (Miller, 2/13)

Sacramento Business Journal: Here's How Top Local Health Executives Want To Improve Life For Patients
Hospitals and health plans must move faster to adopt technology that will improve access to care, local health executives said Friday at the Sacramento Business Journal’s Health Care Leadership Forum. More than 500 people attended the event at the Doubletree by Hilton in Sacramento. Following opening remarks by new Sutter Health CEO Sarah Krevans, a panel of health CEOs identified key opportunities and challenges facing health systems, insurers and provider groups. (Anderson, 2/12)

San Francisco Business Times: Kaiser Permanente's Profits Plummet Nearly 40 Percent In 2015
Net income at Kaiser Permanente's nonprofit hospital and health plan units fell nearly 39 percent last year, although operating revenue jumped nearly 8 percent, the Oakland-based group said Friday afternoon. (Rauber, 2/12)

Bloomberg: Theranos Files Plan To CMS For Fixing California Lab Problems
Theranos Inc. filed a plan to U.S. regulators to fix serious deficiencies at the company’s blood-testing lab in Newark, California, as founder Elizabeth Holmes works to regain credibility for her struggling startup. The company submitted the proposed plan of correction late Friday to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said in an e-mail. (Tracer and Chen, 2/12)

San Francisco Business Times: Theranos Failure Could Have Broad Impact
There may be a lot more riding on Theranos getting a clean bill of health from regulators than the survival of the Palo Alto blood-testing startup itself. "This is going to be the poster child of lab-developed tests; it's going to be bad for the industry," Bessemer Venture Partners investor Stephen Kraus told Politico."A few burning ashes might become a big fire — that's what I fear." (Schubarth, 2/12)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Doctor, PA At Liposuction Office Face Discipline
A physician assistant and the anesthesiologist who supervised him are under state scrutiny for how they ran Pacific Liposculpture, an outpatient liposuction business in University City. The State Attorney General’s Office accuses the pair of overselling their weight-reducing surgical expertise and said there was not enough oversight between doctor and assistant, especially when patients experienced complications and post-surgical pain. (Sisson, 2/14)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Nonalcoholic Liver Diseases Focus Of New UCSD Center
UC San Diego has brought together a wide-ranging team of doctors and scientists to fight a mammoth health risk largely unknown to the public: liver disease not caused by consumption of alcohol. Around 75-100 million Americans are estimated to have Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, or NAFLD, characterized by excessive fat deposits in the liver. It's related to diet and obesity, but also has genetic components, making for a complex pattern of causation. Moreover, the disease course is hard to predict. UC San Diego's NAFLD Research Center unites experts in liver disease treatment with those in other fields, including bioengineering, software development, imaging, systems biology and the microbiome. The goal is to improve diagnosis, understanding of how the disease originates and progresses, and to find preventives and cures, said the center's director, Dr. Rohit Loomba, a professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology at UC San Diego. (Fikes, 2/12)

Ventura County Star: CSU Channel Islands Gets $3 Million Grant For Stem Cell Research
CSU Channel Islands has gotten a $3 million grant that will allow graduate students to do stem cell research at top institutions. The grant, which comes from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, will provide 10 paid internships over five years. The program, which provides a total of $40 million in grants, is open to California universities that do not have a major stem cell research program. (2/15)

KQED: As Homeless Youth Population Grows, Mobile Clinics Are Key Resource
Dr. Seth Ammerman listens intently to his new patient. Ernesto, who does not want his last name disclosed, is homeless. Ernesto is earning a high school degree and working part time, but at night, he and his brother share a tent that they set up on San Jose streets. The daily stress of being homeless is wearing Ernesto out and making him light up too many cigarettes. ... That’s why Ernesto walked into this mobile clinic parked just a few steps away from his classroom at the San Jose Conservation Corps & Charter School. (Romero, 2/15)

The Los Angeles Daily News: U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer Sides With Residents, Calls For Health Assessment
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer said Friday she supports a demand from some Porter Ranch residents that a complete air quality study of the community and health assessment of homes be done before people move back in after official word comes that the leaking Southern California Gas Go. well above the area is plugged. (Wilcox, 2/12)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Couple Enjoys Making Wishes Come True
Back in 2001, Hélène Gould lost her 14-year-old nephew to a rare form of cancer. But before he died in a Paris hospital, he made a wish to meet his favorite French pop star. Moved by his story, the singer left her tour and visited his bedside. Hélène said she’s convinced the meeting extended his life by several months. Now, in his memory, Hélène and her husband, George Gould, are helping grant the wishes of every local child with a life-threatening illness. (Kragen, 2/16)

The San Bernardino Sun: Loma Linda Health Signs Pact With Big Bear Lake Hospital
Loma Linda University Health and the Bear Valley Community Healthcare District have entered into an affiliation agreement to enhance community access to specialty care within the greater Bear Valley area of the San Bernardino Mountains. Under the agreement, Loma Linda University Health will provide resources to district-run Bear Valley Community Hospital in Big Bear Lake. (Steinberg, 2/15)

The San Bernardino Sun: Loma Linda Children’s Hospital Gala Raises $1.3 Million
Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital Foundation raised $1,312,165 last week during its annual gala. Proceeds from the event, held at the Riverside Convention Center and themed “Illuminate: The Path to Vision 2020,” will benefit the Vision 2020 campaign to build a new children’s hospital tower. (Steinberg, 2/15)

The New York Times: Republican Debate Takeaways: Saturday Night Fighting
The Republican candidates debated on Saturday night as if it were one last chance to break through and take down their opponents — and for a few of them, it probably was. ... [Donald Trump] ridiculed Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator, and described Planned Parenthood as a group that provides important health services to women. (He said he disapproved of its role performing abortions.) ... Mr. Kasich continued to call for a lower-key and more genial race, defended his decision to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and said that government has a compassionate role to play in people’s lives, arguing, “Economic growth is not an end unto itself.” (Burns, 2/14)

The Washington Post: Clinton: Under Sanders, ‘You Would Have To Give Up The Insurance You Have Now’
Hillary Clinton stepped up a criticism of her Democratic presidential opponent, Bernie Sanders, on Sunday night, telling supporters at a rally in the Las Vegas suburbs that the senator from Vermont would replace their insurance plans with something more expensive. "We both share the goal of universal health-care coverage, but he wants to start all over again," Clinton said. "And he wants to have a new system that would be quite challenging because you would have to give up the insurance you have now, and it would cost a lot of money." (Weigel, 2/14)

The New York Times: Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost Of Bernie Sanders’s Plans
With his expansive plans to increase the size and role of government, Senator Bernie Sanders has provoked a debate not only with his Democratic rival for president, Hillary Clinton, but also with liberal-leaning economists who share his goals but question his numbers and political realism. The reviews of some of these economists, especially on Mr. Sanders’s health care plans, suggest that Mrs. Clinton could have been too conservative in their debate last week when she said his agenda in total would increase the size of the federal government by 40 percent. That level would surpass any government expansion since the buildup in World War II. (Calmes, 2/15)

Los Angeles Times: What Happens With A Divided Supreme Court? A Look At The Key Cases

The New York Times: Scalia’s Absence Is Likely To Alter Court’s Major Decisions This Term

The Associated Press: Results In Key Cases Could Change With Scalia's Death

The Washington Post: These Are The Key Cases Facing The Supreme Court After Scalia’s Death

NPR: Scalia's Death May Mean Texas Abortion Case Won't Set U.S. Precedent

The Associated Press: Obama Faces Political Puzzle In Naming Scalia Successor

The New York Times: More Republicans Say They’ll Block Supreme Court Nominee

The New York Times: Surge In Medicare Advantage Sign-Ups Confounds Expectations
Five years into Medicare spending cuts that were supposed to devastate private Medicare options for older Americans, enrollment in private insurance plans through Medicare has shot up by more than 50 percent, confounding experts and partisans alike and providing possible lessons for the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. When Congress passed President Obama’s signature health law nearly six years ago, it helped offset the cost by cutting payments to Medicare Advantage plans, offered by private insurers operating under contract with the government. Insurers and Republicans said the cuts — about $150 billion over 10 years — would “gut” the program, a major theme in the 2010 and 2012 elections. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that enrollment would fall about 30 percent. (Pear, 2/12)

The New York Times: Can Health Care Providers Afford To Be Ready For Disaster?
More than 200 people died in hospitals and nursing homes in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, leading to widespread agreement that health care preparedness in the United States needed dramatic improvement. The chaotic evacuations of more than 6,400 hospital and nursing-home patients in New York City after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 reinforced concern about the readiness of health care providers during emergencies. Despite repeated calls for change, however, and billions of dollars in disaster-related costs for health care providers, federal rules do not require that critical medical institutions make even minimal preparations for major emergencies, from hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes to bioterrorist attacks and infectious epidemics such as Ebola and Zika. (Fink, 2/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Pop-Up Health Clinics Fill A Void In Care
Nicole Lamoureux needs about 1,200 volunteers to help complete her mission: transforming a Dallas convention center into what she calls “the largest doctor’s office in the world—for the one day it’s open.” This temporary mega-doctor’s office—a pop-up clinic, if you will—is part of a growing trend representing an increasingly important piece of the medical safety net in the U.S. Such clinics, staged by nonprofits and funded mostly by individual donors, are an opportunity for doctors to care for patients without worrying about insurance, and for those patients to see a doctor they wouldn’t otherwise get to see. (Simon, 2/15)

Politico: Gene Editing: The Next Frontier In America’s Abortion Wars
Activists on both sides of the abortion debate now have a common enemy — the use of a powerful new gene editing technology to tinker with the human race. That may seem like an idea from a sci-fi flick, but it’s already here. The gene-editing technique is already used in research and has the potential to modify human DNA with unprecedented ease in the not-too-distant future. British regulators approved limited experiments in human embryos earlier this month. The technology holds promise to cure diseases like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell and even revive extinct species. But critics fear it could also be harnessed to craft “designer babies,” who are more intelligent, beautiful or athletic and to “edit” embryonic cells to change an inherited trait forever. (Karlin, 2/16)