Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Miracle Machine Makes Heroic Rescues — And Leaves Patients In Limbo
The use of ECMO, the most aggressive form of life support in modern medicine, has skyrocketed — but along with miraculous rescues, it can leave patients in limbo, kept alive with machines but with no prospect of survival outside the ICU. (Melissa Bailey, )
Good morning! Some California lawmakers have qualms about the state Legislature’s decision to dip into a greenhouse gas fund to pay for clean drinking water, but they may have to get over it. More on that below, but first here are some of your top California health stories for the day.
Kaiser Permanente Announces It Will Build Massive $900M Headquarters In Oakland, Reaffirming Commitment To City: Kaiser, already Oakland’s largest private employer, said it will consolidate 7,200 East Bay employees from seven offices into a new, 29-story tower at 2100 Telegraph Ave. Construction is expected to start next year, and the building is set to open in 2023. “Kaiser Permanente has been an anchor in Oakland’s community for more than 70 years,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a statement. “We are so pleased that this organization has reaffirmed its commitment to Oakland with this decision to establish a new headquarters, a central home for its employees and a place for our community to connect and thrive.” In addition to housing corporate offices for Kaiser, the largest employer in Oakland, the building would include doctors offices and space dedicated for health-education classes, community meetings and weekly farmers markets. Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson estimated the move should save more than $60 million per year in reduced operational costs from avoided maintenance on the old sites and lower utility expenses from the more energy efficient new center. Read more from Roland Li of the San Francisco Chronicle, Ali Tadayon and George Avalos of the Bay Area News Group and Steven Ross Johnson of Modern Healthcare.
Housing Prices, Poorly Performing Schools And Expensive Childcare Ding California’s Rankings In National Child Well-Being Report: The annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation measures 16 indicators of childhood well-being, from the rate of low birthweights and teen pregnancy to third-grade reading abilities and the prevalence of single-parent families. This year California’s ranking changed from 36th to 35th. Kentucky ranked one place higher, and Tennessee ranked just below California. Almost all of the states with lower rankings than California were in the South and Southwest, with Mississippi and New Mexico ranked as the worst. Kelly Hardy, who oversees health and research for the nonprofit Children Now, said housing costs are “a huge piece of the puzzle” when calculating economic well being. California received low marks in every category except for health for which the state was ranked 7th place. That’s largely due to the number of children who now have health coverage in the state’s Medicaid program Med-Cal. Read more from Michael Finch of the Sacramento Bee.
Appeals Court Rules That Bay Area Physician Has To Turn Over Records On Patients Who He Wrote Vaccine Exemptions For: Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa works at an “anti-aging” medical clinic and is under the investigation of the Medical Board of California. The decision by the court comes amid a heated debate over doctors providing false exemption, sometimes asking for compensation from the parents. Legislation aiming to curb the fraud is working through the Legislature, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has hinted that he’s opposed to giving final exemption authority to a state official, as the measure dictates. Brian Prystowsky, a Santa Rosa pediatrician working with a state lawmaker to tighten California’s rules on vaccinations, said Sonoma County has become a haven for physician-approved exemptions from vaccine requirements. Read more from Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
CALmatters:
Why Fighting For Clean Water With Climate Change Money Worries Some California Lawmakers
Combat climate change, or clean up California’s water? Those alarmed by the Legislature’s decision to dip into a greenhouse gas fund to pay for clean drinking water may need to get used to it: constitutional restrictions on spending that money are set to expire in 2021. At issue is the decision to address one environmental crisis—the lack of clean water for one million Californians—with money set aside for fighting another: climate change. It’s a move that pits those committed to curbing greenhouse gases against environmental allies over $1.4 billion dollars of polluters’ money, even as the state boasts a $20.6 billion surplus. (Becker, 6/17)
CALmatters:
Beneath Their Rival Efforts To Reduce Police Shootings, Two Lawmakers Share One Common Experience As Mothers
To reduce the use of force by California police, two Democrats began with competing approaches: Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a firebrand from a liberal San Diego district, aimed to crack down by setting a tougher standard for justifiable police shootings. Sen. Anna Caballero, a centrist who flipped a red Central Valley district blue, introduced a police-backed vision to reduce deadly force through improved officer training. (Rosenhall, 6/17)
The California Health Report:
State Budget Deal Expands Health Care To Undocumented Young Adults And Subsidies To Middle-Income Families
State lawmakers have approved a new budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year that seeks to make health care accessible and affordable to more people, including undocumented young adults. The $215 billion budget increases subsidies for people who purchase health insurance through the Covered California exchange, extends Medi-Cal eligibility to cover low-income undocumented adults ages 19 to 25, enacts the state’s own version of the individual mandate, and reduces the cost-sharing burden for some seniors enrolled in the Medi-Cal program. (Boyd-Barrett, 6/17)
The Associated Press:
San Francisco Weighs 1st US City Ban On E-Cigarette Sales
San Francisco supervisors are considering whether to move the city toward becoming the first in the United States to ban all sales of electronic cigarettes. It's part of an effort to crack down on youth vaping. The supervisors will vote Tuesday on measures to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes in San Francisco until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a public health review of the devices. The plan would also ban manufacturing e-cigarettes on city property. (6/18)
Ventura County Star:
County Budget With Major Cost Reforms In Health Care System Passed
But it's a leaner picture for the $527 million budget in the Ventura County Medical Center system, a network of clinics and hospitals. The county operates more than 20 agencies providing public safety, health care, public assistance, environmental regulation, airports, parks and other services, but VCMC accounts for a quarter of the total budget. Bill Foley, the newly hired director of the Health Care Agency, has projected that VCMC will be facing a $47 million loss if a strong turnaround plan is not implemented in the next fiscal year. (Wilson, 6/17)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento To Require Panic Buttons For Hotel Workers
Sacramento will likely soon require 60 hotels in the city to give their workers “panic buttons” to protect them from sexual assault and harassment. The hotels would have to provide all housekeepers with buttons at no cost to the employees. Workers would be able to press the buttons if they are about to witness an act of sexual harassment, such as masturbation. (Clift, 6/18)
Sacramento Bee:
Man Returns To Sacramento Sutter To Thank Doctors Who Saved Him
A man who was reaching end-stage heart failure three years ago reunited with the two doctors who saved his life on Monday morning at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento. Bouba Dieme returned to Sutter with his family for the first time to thank his former doctors: Dr. Zijian Xu, Sutter Heart & Vascular Institute’s heart failure cardiologist and electrophysiologist Dr. Subramaniam Krishnan. “They saved my life in many, many ways. Life means so much more to me now than it did then. There’s more meaning and energy in my life than I had before. They gave me the will to go back and fight the situation to get better,” Dieme said. (Shwe, 6/17)
The Hill:
Pelosi: Dems Will 'Fight Relentlessly' Against Trump's ObamaCare Repeal Attempts
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced President Trump on Monday for reviving plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare, saying Democrats would “fight relentlessly” against it. “The American people already know exactly what the President’s health care plans mean in their lives: higher costs, worse coverage and the end of lifesaving protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” Pelosi said in a statement. (Sullivan, 6/17)
The Hill:
Trump's Health Care Focus Puts GOP On Edge
President Trump has put the issue of health care back on the political front burner, providing ammunition to Democrats and worrying Republicans who think a new battle over ObamaCare will hurt their party in next year’s elections. Senate Republicans, defending 22 seats next year, thought they had put ObamaCare repeal behind them when they told Trump earlier this year that they have no intention of acting on a health care overhaul before the election. (Bolton, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
Biden Gets Tepid Reception At Poverty Event
The gap between former vice president Joe Biden and more liberal candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination was on display Monday before activists at a candidates forum in Washington, where representatives of the Poor People’s Campaign grilled the hopefuls on their approaches to poverty and racism. Biden outlined a new health-care proposal, which would build on the Affordable Care Act by increasing access for lower-income people. The former vice president’s tack on health care is less sweeping than the Medicare-for-all plan embraced by some of his Democratic rivals, which they touted later onstage. (Janes, 6/17)
The Associated Press:
AP Investigation: Many US Jails Fail To Stop Inmate Suicides
The last time Tanna Jo Fillmore talked with her mother, she was in a Utah jail, angry and desperate. She'd called every day that week, begging for help. I need my medicine, she demanded. At 25, Fillmore had long struggled with mental illness, but Xanax and hyperactivity medication had stabilized her. Now, she was locked up on a probation violation, and she told her mother the jail nurse was refusing to provide her pills. In their final conversation, Fillmore threatened to kill herself. (6/18)
The New York Times:
Vaccine Injury Claims Are Few And Far Between
At a time when the failure to immunize children is driving the biggest measles outbreak in decades, a little-known database offers one way to gauge the safety of vaccines. Over roughly the past dozen years in the United States, people have received about 126 million doses of vaccines against measles, a disease that once infected millions of American children and killed 400 to 500 people each year. During that period, 284 people filed claims of harm from those immunizations through a federal program created to compensate people injured by vaccines. Of those claims, about half were dismissed, while 143 were compensated. (Belluck and Abelson, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
The Murder Of Black Transgender Women Is Becoming A Crisis
“They’re just getting so blunt,” Ruby Corado said. “It’s just out there. It used to be more isolated.” Corado could be talking about support for the LGBT community. The Pride parades across the region this month drew huge crowds. And they’re not just drag queens and shimmy-shimmy dancers with in-your-face protests. Social media has been filled during Pride Month with heterosexual couples and families showing up in rainbow regalia supporting LGBT rights with the same verve as they would a Fourth of July parade. (Dvorak, 6/17)
The New York Times:
When You’re Told You’re Too Fat To Get Pregnant
The first time a doctor told Gina Balzano that she was too fat to have a baby was in 2013. She was 32, weighed 317 pounds and had been trying to get pregnant since soon after she and her husband, Nick, married in 2010. Balzano — whom I have known since high school — lives in Waltham, Mass., and works in special education. She’s the kind of person whom others often go to with their problems, but her own predicament, after three years of negative pregnancy tests, had left her feeling overwhelmed. “I’ve always had horrible, heavy, painful periods, so I thought something was wrong,” she says. “But I didn’t know enough to know what to worry about.” She told herself it was time to find out. (Sole-Smith, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
Robocalls Are Overwhelming Hospitals And Patients, Threatening A New Kind Of Health Crisis
In the heart of Boston, Tufts Medical Center treats scores of health conditions, administering measles vaccines for children and pioneering next-generation tools that can eradicate the rarest of cancers. But doctors, administrators and other hospital staff struggled to contain a much different kind of epidemic one April morning last year: a wave of thousands of robocalls that spread like a virus from one phone line to the next, disrupting communications for hours. For most Americans, such robocalls represent an unavoidable digital-age nuisance, resulting in seemingly constant interruptions targeting their phones. (Romm, 6/17)