Los Angeles Times: Are Extreme Heat And Wildfire Smoke Major Disasters? 
For all its assistance, FEMA’s official definition of a “major disaster” does not include two threats that are increasingly posing harm to millions of Americans: extreme heat and wildfire smoke. In a rule-making petition filed Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity and more than 30 other environmental organizations, healthcare groups and trade unions argued that it’s time to change that. They are requesting that the Stafford Act — FEMA’s animating statute — be amended to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke in its regulations. (Smith, 6/17)

Fresno Bee: Thousands Of Central California Residents Could Lose Their Sole Source Of Water. What To Know
More than 20,000 San Joaquin Valley residents could be left high and dry, literally, by Sacramento politicians intent on using $17.5 million that had paid for water trucked to their homes to help fill California’s gaping two-year $56 billion deficit. (Henry, 6/17)

Modern Healthcare: CalOptima To Increase Medicaid Pay Under Managed Care Contract
CalOptima Health's board approved a $526.2 million pay bump for providers who are part of the insurer's Medicaid managed care network in Orange County, California, the county-run health insurer announced Monday. The funds will be distributed from July 2024 to December 2026 to hospitals, physicians, community clinics, behavioral health practitioners and other safety-net providers in Southern California, CalOptima said in a news release. (Kacik, 6/17)

Reuters: US To Stop Advance Payments For Medicare Providers Hit By Change Hack
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said on Monday it plans to close the advance payments program it started to help some Medicare providers and suppliers affected by disruptions at UnitedHealth's Change Healthcare technology unit. It launched the payments program in March after a hack at Change Healthcare on Feb. 21 by a group called ALPHV, also known as "BlackCat", disrupted medical insurance payments across the United States. (6/17)

Modern Healthcare: 2024 Medicare Advantage Star Ratings Revision: Winners And Losers
Medicare Advantage insurers that receive higher revised star ratings for this year stand to gain additional quality bonus payments that one analysis estimates could exceed $1 billion. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday that it has redone 2024 quality scores for Medicare Advantage plans after years of complaints and a pair of losses in lawsuits challenging how it modified the ratings formula. Medicare Advantage contracts that earn new scores of at least 3.5 of 5 stars will get higher bonus payments this year and have more time to submit bids for 2025. (Tepper, 6/17)

Bloomberg: Uninsured Americans Dropped By One-Quarter Over Five Years
The number of Americans without health insurance dropped by about a fourth from 2019 to 2023, US health researchers said, as the government tried to bolster coverage during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, 25 million Americans of all ages were uninsured, down from 33.2 million in 2019, according to preliminary survey results released Tuesday by the US National Center for Health Statistics. Children without health insurance also declined from 5.1% in 2019 to 3.9% last year. (Nix, 6/18)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Woman Says CVS Pharmacist Refused To Fill Misoprostol Prescription 
A sternly worded letter from the National Women’s Law Center demands that CVS Health take immediate steps to ensure access to reproductive drugs after a CVS pharmacist allegedly told a local woman “I’m not comfortable dispensing it to you” when the woman tried to fill a prescription for misoprostol. (Sisson, 6/17)

The Washington Post: Bernie Sanders Calls For Investigation Into Contraception Costs 
Women are still being charged for contraception even though federal law dictates it should be free. The chair of the Senate health committee wants a government watchdog to investigate why. Under the Affordable Care Act, health plans are required to provide birth control to patients as a preventive service. Repeated probes have found that plans flout the law and patients are asked to pay, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a letter being sent Monday to the Government Accountability Office and shared with The Washington Post. (Diamond, 6/17)

Roll Call: Wyden Wants More Medicaid Funding To Keep Obstetric Units Open 
The chair of the Senate Finance Committee on Monday released a bill that would increase federal financial support to hospitals in hopes of stemming the tide of labor and delivery unit closures in rural and underserved areas. Nearly a quarter of rural hospitals stopped providing obstetric services between 2011 and 2021, according to Chartis, a health care consulting firm. Analysts blame the closures on low Medicaid reimbursement rates and declining birth rates in rural communities. The combination, they said, makes it financially challenging to keep labor and delivery units staffed. (Hellmann, 6/17)

Stat: HHS Considering Changes To Sterilization Consent Process
Sonya Borrero didn’t learn about forced sterilization in medical school. She learned about it from a novel. She’s a historical fiction nut, and during her year as chief resident, she happened to pick up a book depicting the horrors of India’s population control program of 1975, when poor people were literally beaten up and dragged off the street into surgery. (Boodman, 6/18)

The Washington Post: Pioneering Studies Show Promise In Sequencing A Baby’s Genome At Birth
Early results from North Carolina and New York show that genome sequencing is catching conditions not found through traditional newborn screening. (Johnson, 6/17)

CNN: Using Metformin In Preconception Or Early Pregnancy May Not Be Tied To Higher Birth Defects Risk, Studies Suggest
Some studies have raised concerns about a potential link between the widely used type 2 diabetes drug metformin and an increased risk of conceiving a baby with birth defects. But new research now suggests that the use of the medication among men planning to conceive or women in early pregnancy does not appear to be linked with an increased risk of major birth defects for their children. (Howard, 6/17)

MPR News: Mom Hopes Federal Stillbirth Law Will Protect Others From Grief
A bill to prevent stillbirths is headed to President Biden's desk after passing the U.S. Senate. If signed into law, The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act would allocate millions of federal dollars to prevent stillbirths, defined by the Centers for Disease Control as the loss of a baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Every year in the United States, more than 20,000 pregnancies end in a stillbirth, and experts say a quarter of those could be prevented. (Cobb and Crann, 6/17)

KQED: San Francisco Lawmakers Want Sober Housing To Be Part Of Homelessness Plan
A pair of San Francisco lawmakers on Monday outlined their plans to require the city to create more drug-free recovery housing in its push to house the unhoused population, building on a growing movement toward establishing sober housing for people trying to exit homelessness while struggling with addiction. The legislation that San Francisco Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman plan to introduce Tuesday acknowledges that some permanent supportive housing projects are legally restricted to “drug-permissive,” harm-reduction approaches, which means they are required to accept applicants regardless of their sobriety and cannot evict residents solely for the use of illicit drugs. (McClurg, 6/17)

Bay Area News Group: San Jose Weighs Sanctioned Encampments For 500 Homeless People Living Near Waterways
At the direction of state regulators pushing San Jose to clean up its creeks and rivers, local officials are developing an ambitious plan to move about 500 homeless people living along its waterways to sanctioned encampment sites on public property across the city. The City Council approved the basic outline of the plan last week as part of its new $5.3 billion budget. On Tuesday, the council will consider how to put it into action. (Varian, 6/17)

Los Angeles Times: Brutal Attacks In Venice Force Questions About Homelessness, Crime
Mary Klein wanted to get in 3,000 more steps. It was around 10:30 p.m., and the longtime Venice resident and sculptor — who had just finished up at work caring for an elderly couple — hadn’t reached her daily goal of 10,000. She headed to the canals, parked along Strongs Drive and started to walk. But soon after, she said, she felt someone’s presence behind her. Then everything went black. (Goldberg, 6/18)

Los Angeles Blade: White House Reaffirms Commitment To Advancing LGBTQ+ Rights
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre began her briefing with reporters on Monday by honoring Pride Month as a time to “reflect on the progress we have made in pursuit of equality, justice, inclusion” and “recommit ourselves to do more to support LGBTQI+ rights at home and around the world.” She said that while the Biden-Harris administration has taken “historic action” to expand freedoms and protections for the community “since day one,” state legislatures last year filed more than 600 anti-LGBTQ bills, which disproportionately target transgender youth. (Kane, 6/17)

Bay Area Reporter: LGBTQ Agenda: Queer Equality In US Backsliding, Biz Report Finds
An annual report on LGBTQ equality found that more states' legal, work, health, family support, and religious and political environments became less favorable over the past year. This marks the second consecutive year that has been the case, the report noted, calling it a "dangerous trend." Out Leadership, a B-corp (a for-profit company certified by B Lab for is social impact) based in New York City (formerly Out in the Street), released this year's equality report — the "2024 State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index" to coincide with Pride Month. (Ferrannini, 6/18)

Los Angeles Times: Judge Blocks Rule Change Protecting LGBTQ+ Students In 6 More States
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students in six additional states, dealing another setback for a policy that has been under legal attack by Republican attorneys general. U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves referred to the regulation as “arbitrary in the truest sense of the word” in granting a preliminary injunction blocking it in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. His ruling comes days after a different federal judge temporarily blocked the new rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana. (Schreiner, 6/17)

Military.com: VA Designates Male Breast Cancer, 2 Other Cancers As Service-Connected Illnesses Under PACT Act
The Department of Veterans Affairs has added three rare cancers to its list of illnesses presumed to be caused by exposure to burn pits and other environmental toxins during the Persian Gulf War and post-9/11 combat operations. The VA announced Monday in the Federal Register that it has designated male breast cancer, urethral cancer and cancer of the paraurethral glands as presumptive diseases under the PACT Act, allowing affected veterans to file for expedited disability compensation and health care benefits. (Kime, 6/17)

CNBC: FDA Approves Merck Pneumococcal Disease Vaccine Designed For Adults
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Merck’s new vaccine designed to protect adults from a bacteria known as pneumococcus that can cause serious illnesses and a lung infection called pneumonia, the drugmaker said. (Constantino, 6/17)

CIDRAP: Studies Find Little To No Immunity To H5N1 Avian Flu Virus In Americans 
The American population has little to no pre-existing immunity to the H5N1 avian flu virus circulating on dairy and poultry farms, according to preliminary findings from ongoing testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In other developments, outbreaks in dairy herds continue to be reported at a steady pace, along with sporadic detections in poultry flocks. (Schnirring, 6/17)