Los Angeles Times: Where The Candidates For California Governor Stand On The State's Biggest Issues
Welcome to your guide to some of the key policy positions of six top candidates in California’s race for governor. The candidates listed have met certain criteria, including: previous election to public office; at least 5% support from likely voters in an independent, established public opinion poll; or demonstrated fundraising ability. Here’s where they stand. (6/4)

Modern Healthcare: Primary Season: Democrats' Next Healthcare Ideas Go To The Polls
Sitting congressional Democrats are increasingly comfortable with the idea of a public option. Over the past year, lawmakers have proposed several bills involving public option ideas. They counter the "Medicare for all" proposal by Vermont's liberal independent Sen. Bernie Sanders that critics have panned as impractical and costly while shifting the majority of Americans off their employer coverage. Current polling for both these options track in their favor at a time when Obamacare has never been more popular. (Luthi, 6/4)

California Healthline: Health Care Simmers On Back Burner In California Heartland’s Hot House Races
About a dozen mostly retired locals took over a corner of a busy intersection on a recent Saturday afternoon in this San Joaquin Valley city, toting signs that read “Dump Denham 2018.” Several cars zooming by honked in support. Buda Kajer-Crain, 69, paced up and down the sidewalk waving a large American flag. She said she wanted U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) gone, in part because of his vote one year ago to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. (Ibarra, 6/4)

KQED: Why Young Brains Are Getting Big Attention In The Governor's Race 
The first years of life are extremely important for our brains. One million neural connections are made every single second of life until the age of 3, according to current research, and the preschool years have a long-term influence on outcomes in health and education. ...Early childhood advocates have been campaigning for months to get the next governor on board with their efforts, arguing that otherwise the state risks another eight years with an underfunded field and another generation of California constituents missing out on crucial resources for human development. (Neely, 6/4)

KQED: Close To A Quarter Of Lettuce-Related E. Coli Cases Were In California
The nationwide outbreak of E. Coli tied to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, has now sickened 45 people in California, according to state health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday announced an update on the number of cases around the country: At least 197 people in 35 states have now become sick from the outbreak. (Goldberg, 6/4)

In other news from across the state —

Orange County Register: Pets Not Eating More Marijuana In California, Post Prop 64, Data Shows
For several years, calls to animal poison control centers about pets accidentally ingesting marijuana — typically when the drug is used as an ingredient in food — have been on the rise. But new data suggests that hasn’t changed since Jan. 1, when recreational sales became legal in California. (Staggs, 6/4)

 KPBS: Study Shows Troops At High Risk For Skin Cancer
The evidence continues to show military troops are at higher risk to develop skin cancer. ... The paper published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology pulls together nine studies on various military populations, from recent samples — back to troops who served in World War II. (Walsh, 6/4)

In other public health news —

The San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Man Says New Migraine Drug Has Ended His Pain
[Paul Best used] Aimovig, the first-ever migraine-preventing medication with local roots that extend to basic research performed at UC San Diego in the 1980s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug earlier this month and doctors nationwide will soon be able to scratch out prescriptions for a medication that, for the first time, may prevent, rather than treat, migraine symptoms. Best has a head start over most of the nation’s estimated 4 million Americans who suffer daily a migraines. He signed up for one of the medication’s clinical trials in 2013, and is one of only 250 participants nationwide enrolled into a follow-up study that has given him free access to monthly injected doses ever since. (Sisson, 6/4)

Politico: Texas Plaintiffs Personalize Uphill Legal Challenge To Overturn Obamacare
Two self-employed Texans, John Nantz and Neill Hurley, have leading roles in the latest legal effort to kill Obamacare. The men are the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit by 20 states that argues Congress fatally undercut the law when it repealed the individual mandate penalty in tax cut legislation. Nantz and Hurley say the mandate compels them to buy costly insurance that doesn't fit their needs — even though the financial penalty for not complying is disappearing next year. (Rayasam, 6/4)

In other national health care news —

The Washington Post: Trump Administration Inaugurates Medicaid Scorecard For State Programs
The Trump administration is embarking on a basic change to Medicaid that for the first time evaluates states based on the health of millions of Americans and the services they use through the vast public insurance program for the poor. Seema Verma, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, announced on Monday an initial version of a “scorecard” that compiles and publicizes data from states for both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a companion for youngsters in working-class families. (Goldstein, 6/4)

California Healthline: Verma Unveils State Medicaid Scorecard But Refuses To Judge Efforts
The Trump administration Monday released a Medicaid “scorecard” intended to show how the nation’s largest health program is performing. But the nation’s top Medicaid official didn’t want to draw any conclusions. “This is about bringing a level of transparency and accountability to the Medicaid program that we have never had before,” said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.Yet in a meeting with reporters, Verma refused to discuss the findings in any detail or comment on any individual states that performed poorly or exceptionally. (Galewitz, 6/5)

The Associated Press: Long Waits Under VA's Private Health Program
A health care program being expanded by the Trump administration to give veterans greater access to private doctors has failed to provide care within 30 days as promised due to faulty data and poor record-keeping that could take years to remedy. That's according to a government investigation. The Government Accountability Office found veterans often waited between 51 and 64 days for appointments with private doctors under the Choice program. The scheduling process took as long as 70 days. (6/4)

The New York Times: She Went To Jail For A Drug Relapse. Tough Love Or Too Harsh?
As soon as Julie Eldred was granted probation for stealing jewelry to buy drugs, she got busy fulfilling the judge’s conditions. She began an intensive all-day outpatient treatment program. She even went an extra step and started daily doses of Suboxone, a medication that can quell opiate cravings. Then she relapsed and snorted her drug of choice — fentanyl.To stop from plunging into free fall, she asked her doctor for a stronger dose of Suboxone. She stayed clean the next day. And the next. (Hoffman, 6/4)

The Washington Post: Researchers Use Immune-Cell ‘Army’ To Battle Another Tough Cancer
A Florida woman diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, generally considered incurable, is free of the disease two-and-a-half years after a novel therapy used her own immune cells to target her tumors, researchers said Monday. Striking recoveries were reported earlier for a patient with deadly liver cancer and another with advanced colon cancer. The three patients were treated by a team at the National Cancer Institute led by Steven Rosenberg, an immunotherapy pioneer who is chief of the surgery branch. For each patient, the team sequenced the genomes of their tumors to find mutations, then tested immune cells extracted from the cancers to identify which ones might recognize the defects. Those cells were expanded by the billions in the laboratory, then infused back into the patients, where they attacked the tumors. (McGinley, 6/4)

Los Angeles Times: 'I Have Definitely Hit The Jackpot.' Advanced Breast Cancer Disappears After New Immunotherapy
The patient’s “complete durable cancer regression” followed a single infusion of her own immune cells, which were painstakingly chosen for their ability to recognize and fight her tumors — then expanded into an army of 82 billion identical cells. More than three years later, the patient, Judy Perkins, is not only alive, but seemingly cancer-free, according to a report published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.“I have definitely hit the jackpot,” said Perkins, a retired engineer from Port St. Lucie, Fla. In the fast-moving world of cancer research, the new report is being hailed as a development that could open a broad new front in cancer immunotherapy. (Healy, 6/4)

The Associated Press: High Court Rules In Dispute Over Immigrant Teen's Abortion
The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a case about a pregnant immigrant teen who obtained an abortion with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, siding with the Trump administration and wiping away a lower court decision for the teen but rejecting a suggestion her lawyers should be disciplined. The decision is about the teen's individual case and doesn't affect an ongoing class-action case about the ability of immigrant teens in government custody to obtain abortions, the ACLU said. The justices ruled in an unsigned opinion that vacating a lower court decision in favor of the teen, who had been in government custody after entering the country illegally, was the proper course because the case became moot after she obtained an abortion. (6/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court Vacates Ruling On Undocumented Minor’s Abortion
The high court’s action hands a potential boost to the administration as it continues to defend its stance because the lower-court precedent will no longer exist. Related litigation is continuing, and the issue could come back to the Supreme Court. The court’s action came in an unsigned opinion with no recorded dissents. A Washington, D.C., appeals court ordered the administration in October to let the teenager leave government custody so she could get an abortion. The girl—from an unnamed country—had crossed the southern U.S. border in September when she was eight weeks pregnant. (Kendall, 6/4)

Politico: Supreme Court Wipes Out Appeals Court Ruling In Immigrant Abortion Case
The action means the question is all but certain to arise again, particularly given the Trump administration’s policy of resisting actions it views as facilitating abortions for minors. The high-profile case, which dates back to last fall, was the first in a series of court battles over abortion policy in the relatively obscure Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is responsible for the care of unaccompanied minors who enter the country illegally. Monday’s court order, one of the first of abortion cases with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on the bench, comes after weeks of delay suggesting that there might have been conflicting opinions behind the scenes of the court, but no dissenting opinion was issued. (Gerstein and Rayasam, 6/4)