Becker's Hospital Review: Moody's Downgrades Children’s Hospital Los Angeles' Credit Rating
Moody’s has downgraded Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ rating to “Baa3” from “Baa2.” The hospital has recorded three consecutive years of weak financial performance and has been challenged to rebuild liquidity, Moody’s said in a May 15 report. A contributing factor to the hospital’s weak performance is its high dependence on state funding due to its significant Medicaid exposure, “which reflects high exposure to social risk.” (Cass, 5/19)

Bay Area News Group: Contra Costa County Gets $98 Million For Three New Mental Health Facilities
According to Contra Costa Health, the funding was provided through California’s Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program, a multi-year initiative to improve behavioral health care infrastructure. That state funding is part of Proposition 1, a bond passed by voters in March 2024. (Sivanandam, 5/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Return To Scripps Doctors Appears Rocky For Anthem HMO Patients 
Nearly two weeks after Anthem Blue Cross members regained access to Scripps doctors following a contract lapse, it appears that the process of returning to previous caregivers has been rocky for those enrolled in health management organization plans. (Sisson, 2/19)

Becker's Hospital Review: Stanford Taps Microsoft To Streamline Cancer Case Prep
Stanford Health Care, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is testing a new tool from Microsoft designed to ease the burden of preparing complex cancer cases for tumor board meetings. The technology — a healthcare agent orchestrator — is being piloted by Stanford data scientists and developers to create autonomous AI agents that compile and synthesize key clinical data, according to a May 19 news release from Microsoft. (Diaz, 5/19)

Bay Area News Group: Live Organ Donations Are Growing In The U.S., California And Bay Area, But So Is The Need
Since 2014, more than 500,000 people in the U.S. have donated organs, 200,000 of them as living donors, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. (Dai, 5/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego’s New Ambulance Model Is Raking In Millions. But The City Still Wants To Change Gears.
San Diego leaders say they plan to bring ambulance service in-house, despite the notable success of a new partnership where private ambulances transport patients while the city handles deployment, staffing and billing. (Garrick, 5/19)

Los Angeles Times: Latino Legislative Caucus Decries Newsom's Proposed Medi-Cal Cuts
Latino legislators criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget cuts to Medi-Cal Monday afternoon, saying the plan to freeze enrollment and charge premiums for those adult immigrants without documentation already enrolled was a betrayal of California’s promise to protect the vulnerable. Legislative pushback for the May budget revision, released by Newsom last week, comes after the governor announced an additional $12-billion budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year. (McDonald, 5/19)

The Hill: Scalise: GOP Eyeing Medicaid Work Requirements For ‘Early 2027’
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Monday that Republicans are eyeing early 2027 as the target date for the new Medicaid work requirements in the large budget package intended to advance and solidify President Trump’s agenda. The timeline for the bill’s new work requirements remains up in the air, as Republican leadership continues to negotiate with warring factions of the conference over details of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which would extend Trump’s tax cuts and boost his border funding priorities while reforming Medicaid and food assistance programs. (Fortinsky, 5/19)

AP: Trump Heads To Capitol Hill To Push 'Big, Beautiful' Bill
President Donald Trump is heading to Capitol Hill early Tuesday to seal the deal on his “big, beautiful bill,” using the power of political persuasion to unify divided House Republicans on the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing ahead of planned votes this week. Trump has implored GOP holdouts to “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE.” But negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority, who are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda. (Mascaro, Freking and Askarinam, 5/20)

Voice of OC: An OC Senator Pushes To Fund Drug Court Programs Across California
State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) is looking to help fund drug treatment courts and make them available for residents across California under two bills as local law enforcement agencies and courts start to arrest and convict people under a new state law. The bills come after more than two-thirds of voters across the Golden State approved Prop. 36 – a new unfunded law that aims to increase punishment on certain drug and theft crimes and is expected to increase the costs for prisons, jails and courts. (Elattar, 5/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Homelessness In San Diego County Finally Dropped. Can The Decrease Hold? 
There were 9,905 homeless people found in San Diego County in January, a decrease of several hundred individuals from the start of 2024 and the region’s first drop in years. And that wasn’t the only good news. (Nelson, 5/20)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Is Paying Off Millions In Medical Debt. Do You Qualify?
Did you get a letter in the mail from the County of Los Angeles with the word “Undue” in bold blue? It’s not a scam. It’s a notification that your medical debt was cleared by the county. More than 134,000 Los Angeles County residents began getting notices in the mail Monday as part of the first wave of medical bill forgiveness made possible by the county’s Medical Debt Relief Program. The first round of notices is expected to relieve more than $183 million in debt. (Garcia, 5/20)

LAist: O.C. Health Officials Allege State Regulator Threatened Board Member To Help Powerful Private Interests
There were calls. And texts. And emails — all nudging Brian Helleland to use his role on the board of directors at CalOptima Health to ensure the agency kept backing a planned healthcare center in Westminster. The messages were coming at all hours — the first one after 11 p.m. — from Hang Nguyen, a top regulator in Orange County for the state Department of Public Health, using her work email. Nguyen is in charge of investigating complaints against healthcare facilities, including the one Helleland works for. (Replogle, 5/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: California To Pay For Learning Disabled Students To Attend Religious Schools
California law since 1993 has allowed children with learning disabilities to attend private schools at state expense, but only if the schools are non-religious. That is apparently about to change under a court settlement Monday between state education officials and a group of Orthodox Jewish parents. (Egelko, 5/19)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Napa Nonprofit Quietly Empowers Neurodiverse Adults. Over The Weekend, It Stepped Into The Spotlight
For nearly three decades, Moving Forward Towards Independence has quietly helped neurodiverse adults in Napa build the skills they need to live independently — offering support, housing and a path toward self-sufficiency. On Sunday, the nonprofit stepped out from behind the scenes. (5/19)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Police Department Clears Backlog Of Thousands Of Untested Sexual Assault Kits
Thousands of sexual assault evidence kits languished untested in the city of San Diego for years. The tests, comprised of DNA samples and other evidence, can be lengthy and invasive for survivors. However, after multiple years of testing, the San Diego Police Department has cleared its backlog. (Martinez, 5/19)

Berkeleyside: Berkeley To Close Cesar Chavez Park As Drone Tests For Methane
Cesar Chavez Park will be fully closed for two days this week as Berkeley flies a drone over the landfill-turned-park to test if toxic gas is leaking into the air. The waterfront park will be closed on Tuesday, May 20, and Wednesday, May 21, “while a drone does a regulator-required aerial survey” of the former landfill, according to a one-sentence notice posted on the city’s website. Other parts of the Berkeley Marina will be closed for “no longer than 30 minutes” on a “rolling closure basis” Wednesday and Thursday, according to the city. (Kwok, 5/19)

AP: Trump Signs The Take It Down Act. What Is It?
President Donald Trump on Monday signed the Take It Down Act, bipartisan legislation that enacts stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery, sometimes called “revenge porn,” as fell as deepfakes created by artificial intelligence. The measure, which goes into effect immediately, was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and later gained the support of First Lady Melania Trump. Critics of the measure, which addresses both real and artificial intelligence-generated imagery, say the language is too broad and could lead to censorship and First Amendment issues. (Ortutay, 5/20)

The Mercury News: The Trump Administration Has Cancelled $85.6 Million In Federal Grants To Santa Clara County — All Of It Related To Public Health
Amid a deluge of cuts to federal spending, the Trump administration has canceled three grants totaling $85.6 million to Santa Clara County that helped fund public health initiatives related to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines. More than 98% of the grant funds had already been spent by the time they were canceled in March, but County Executive James Williams and Dr. Sarah Rudman, the acting public health officer, worry that the terminations are just “the tip of the iceberg.” (Hase, 5/19)

LAist: LA County’s HIV Prevention Work Threatened By Federal Funding Cuts
Dozens of healthcare providers contracted to do HIV prevention work in L.A. County are urging state lawmakers to step in and cover millions in anticipated federal cuts to their life-saving programs. L.A. County’s Department of Public Health sent notice to 39 organizations that their contracts to provide STD and HIV prevention services will be terminated on May 31 because they depend on more than $19 million in CDC grant funding that the Trump administration has signaled it is likely to eliminate. (Schrank, 5/19)

Stat: Trump OSTP Director Calls For Return To 'Gold-Standard Science' 
President Trump’s science adviser, Michael Kratsios, called for a return to reproducible and transparent research to kickstart what he characterized as years of stalled scientific progress, in his first detailed public remarks on science policy since taking office in March. (Wosen, 5/19)

Politico: MAHA To Reveal Plan On Kids' Chronic Diseases
The Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission is set to release its much-awaited report this week that should shed light on its strategy to combat the chronic disease epidemic among American children. The report, to be released Thursday, is expected to identify the key drivers of chronic childhood illness, such as asthma and autoimmune diseases, in the U.S. It could indicate how HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might shift key health policy and research focuses within the nation’s health agencies as he seeks to further his MAHA agenda. (Hooper and Cirruzzo, 5/19)

Politico: Kennedy Set For Another Hill Face-Off 
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will again make the case this week for an unprecedented downsizing of federal agencies — this time before a Senate Appropriations panel on Tuesday. The panel’s chair is someone who’s already found fault with the downsizing: West Virginia Republican Shelley Moore Capito. ... Kennedy will need Capito, whose state still has a significant mining industry, on his side to enact President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal 2026. It calls for a more-than-$30 billion cut to HHS’s budget — more than a quarter of the agency’s funding. (Zeller, 5/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Joe Biden Had Unrivaled Medical Care. How Did His Cancer Go Undetected?
How was Joe Biden’s cancer not caught earlier? The news that the former president is battling an aggressive, stage-4 prostate cancer that has spread to the bone ignited a public debate about why a person with peerless access to medical care was diagnosed at such an advanced stage with a disease that is quite common in men his age. (Abbott and Linskey, 5/19)

The Washington Post: Biden’s Cancer Renews Debate About Prostate Screenings For Older Men
Former president Joe Biden’s newly diagnosed prostate cancer, an aggressive form that has spread to his bones, has renewed the debate about who should receive annual screenings for signs of the disease. Prostate cancer, the second most common cause of cancer deaths for men, kills 35,000 a year. ... His medical records as president do not indicate whether his blood tests included screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which, when elevated, can indicate a higher risk of prostate cancer. (Eunjung Cha and Achenbach, 5/19)

The Washington Post: New Clues Point To Why Colorectal Cancer Is Rising In Young People
While the overall numbers are still relatively low, colorectal cancer will become the leading cause of cancer-related deaths for adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s by 2030. Get concise answers to your questions. New evidence suggests the reason may trace back to early childhood. In a study recently published in Nature, scientists unveiled a link between the rise in young colorectal cancers and a toxin called colibactin. For years, we’ve known that colibactin, produced by certain strains of bacteria like E. coli, can mutate our DNA and potentially cause colorectal cancer. (Pasricha, 5/19)

Boston Herald: Glioblastoma Brain Cancer Research: Study Provides Glimmer Of Hope 
A new study by Mass General Brigham researchers provides a glimmer of hope for patients with glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer in adults. The researchers found that glioblastoma patients who received a common anti-seizure and pain drug — gabapentin — ended up living longer. (Sobey, 5/19)

Military.Com: Veterans' VA Referrals To Private Medical Care Will No Longer Require Additional Doctor Review
The Department of Veterans Affairs has changed its process for veterans to get medical care from non-VA providers, removing a requirement that a referral to community care be reviewed by another VA doctor. The VA announced Monday that it is enacting a provision of the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act that will help ease veterans' access to medical services from private providers. (Kime, 5/19)