The Mercury News: Ballot Initiatives In 5 Bay Area Cities Aim To Lower Costs At Stanford Health Care Facilities 
Pledging to hold Stanford Health Care and other healthcare providers accountable for improving quality patient care while keeping costs under control, a health care workers union on Tuesday filed a November 2018 ballot initiative with the city of Palo Alto — its sixth action around the greater Bay Area in recent weeks. The latest move by the Service Employees International Union — United Healthcare Workers West takes aim at Stanford Health Care’s flagship facility, Stanford University Medical Center, which is based in Palo Alto. But the union also filed initiatives last week in Emeryville, Livermore, Pleasanton and Redwood City where Stanford Health Care operates physicians clinics. A ballot measure filed by the union in Watsonville is aimed at Watsonville Community Hospital, which is not affiliated with Stanford Health Care. (Seipel, 12/19)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Blesses Blindness Treatment That Could Cost $1 Million
The Food and Drug Administration approved for sale the first therapy in the U.S. that delivers a functional gene to replace a faulty, disease-causing one—a treatment that could carry a price in excess of $1 million, its maker has said. The injected gene therapy from Spark Therapeutics Inc. is designed to improve sight in people with a rare form of vision loss caused by an inherited genetic mutation. The condition, retinal dystrophy, often manifests itself in young children and affects up to 3,000 Americans, Spark said. (Loftus, 12/19)

The Washington Post: FDA Approves First Gene Therapy For An Inherited Disease
In a historic move, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a pioneering gene therapy for a rare form of childhood blindness, the first such treatment cleared in the United States for an inherited disease. The approval signals a new era for gene therapy, a field that struggled for decades to overcome devastating setbacks but now is pushing forward in an effort to develop treatments for hemophilia, sickle-cell anemia and an array of other genetic diseases. Yet the products, should they reach patients, are likely to carry stratospheric prices — a prospect already worrying consumer advocates and economists. (McGinley, 12/19)

Los Angeles Times: FDA Approves Gene Therapy To Fix Mutations That Can Lead To Blindness
Tuesday's announcement marks the third time in five months that the drug safety agency has allowed a gene therapy — a form of treatment with a long and fitful safety history — on the U.S. market. The first approval went to Kymriah, which treats a form of leukemia, in August. In October, the drug agency cleared a second gene-based treatment called Yescarta to treat a form of lymphoma. "Gene therapy will become a mainstay in treating, and maybe curing, many of our most devastating and intractable illnesses," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the FDA's commissioner, said Tuesday. "We're at a turning point when it comes to this novel form of therapy." (Healy, 12/19)

KPBS: Hepatitis A Outbreak Most Likely Over, Public Health Emergency Could End Soon 
San Diego County health officials said the worst of the hepatitis A outbreak is most likely over and that the local health emergency could end by January 2018. ...From May to September, the county confirmed around 80 hepatitis A cases per month. (Hoffman, 12/19)

In other public health news —

Los Angeles Times: Rich People Experience Happiness In A More Self-Centered Way Than Poor People, Study Suggests
Rich people are different from the rest of us — and that includes the way they experience happiness.Instead of feeling positive emotions that involve connections with other people, their happiness is more likely to be expressed as feelings that focus on themselves, new research shows. However, this difference doesn't necessarily mean that high-income people have more total happiness than people who earn less.The findings were published this week in the journal Emotion, and they seemed to fit a larger pattern, according to the psychologists who conducted the study. (Kaplan, 12/19)

Capital Public Radio: Sac PD Training Officers How To Interact With People With Mental Illness
Sacramento Police Department officers are training this week to safely interact with people who are under severe mental distress. In the past 18 months, Sac PD Officers have shot and killed two men in high-profile cases. (Moffitt, 12/19)

Capital Public Radio: CARB Approves $663 Million For Clean Trucks, Low-Income Communities 
California wants more environmentally friendly vehicles on the road so much so that the state has approved $663 million to do just that. The main purpose of the funding approved by the California Air Resources Control Board, or CARB, is to eliminate diesel emissions. (Romero, 12/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: Berkeley OKs Continued Use Of Pepper Spray In Crowds
The Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to keep in place a recently passed ordinance that allows police officers to use pepper spray on violent protesters, rejecting a recommendation from a civilian commission to roll back the law for health concerns. The 5-3 vote will allow police to continue to use the spray in crowd situations when targeting individuals who have become violent, but Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said that officers have not had to do so since the ordinance passed. (Ma, 12/19)

In other news from across the state —

Capital Public Radio: Stockton Food Bank Sees Growing Need This Season 
Food banks across the country are preparing to hand out the traditional Christmas dinner for needy families this week. The Stockton Emergency Food Bank hands out meals to 250 people each day, five days a week. Overall, that's around 60,000 a year. (Ibarra, 12/19)

KQED: As Marijuana Industry Grows, Workers Begin To Unionize 
On Jan. 1, adults in California will be able to walk into a shop like Hugs and buy marijuana products for recreational use, a development that is going to cause the industry to boom. As investors and owners get ready to cash in, an effort is underway to unionize marijuana workers like [Brittany] Dyke. (Harnett, 12/19)

The New York Times: Congress Approves Republican Tax Plan Setting Up Delivery To Trump’s Desk
Clearing the final major hurdle for a decades-long goal, Republicans mustered enough support in the Senate to approve a sweeping tax plan. The vote, along party lines, was 51-48. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was the only one who was not present, as he returned home to receive medical treatment. (12/20)

The Washington Post: GOP Tax Bill’s Passage Slightly Delayed Over Last-Minute Senate Snag
House Republicans thought they had finished their tax work on Tuesday afternoon when they passed a version of the bill 227 to 203. But the effort hit a snag Tuesday afternoon when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that three of its provisions violated that chamber’s Byrd Rule — guidelines on what types of legislation can pass with a simple 50-vote majority. (Stein and Paletta, 12/20)

Bloomberg: Cornyn Says Tax Bill Mandate Repeal Makes Obamacare ‘Unworkable'
The No. 2 Senate Republican said Tuesday that the GOP’s tax bill will make Obamacare “unworkable,” which he hopes will force Democrats into negotiations to replace the law. Asked about the failure of the GOP’s efforts to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Senator John Cornyn of Texas noted the tax measure will repeal the penalty for not buying health insurance, a central element of the Affordable Care Act. (Dennis, 12/19)

The Wall Street Journal: How The Tax Plan Affects Business: Everything You Need To Know
Health insurers, an overwhelmingly domestic industry, will reap enormous benefits from the tax bill’s sharp cut to the corporate rate. Analysts project that the companies initially could see sharp increases in earnings—perhaps in the 15% to 20% range, said Ana Gupte of Leerink Partners LLC. “It’s huge,” she said. She suggested that insurers are likely to find a variety of outlets for the additional cash, including share repurchases, dividends, investing to grow their businesses and merger activity, which would come on top of a fast pace of managed-care deals already under way. (Wilde Mathews, 12/19)

Modern Healthcare: House Republicans Pass Tax Cut Bill 
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act could dramatically alter the healthcare landscape by repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate starting in 2019. It also could result in tighter access to capital and greater margin pressure for not-for-profit health systems. Experts caution that the legislation will have big downstream effects on funding for Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies and other federal and state healthcare programs. That's because the projected $1.5 trillion increase in the federal budget deficit resulting from the tax cuts would put pressure on Congress to slash healthcare spending. (Meyer, 12/19)

Politico: The Stealth Repeal Of Obamacare
Obamacare survived the first year of President Donald Trump, but it’s badly damaged. The sweeping Republican tax bill on the verge of final passage would repeal the individual mandate in 2019, potentially taking millions of people out of the health insurance market. On top of that, the Trump administration has killed some subsidies, halved the insurance enrollment period, gutted the Obamacare marketing campaign, and rolled out a regulatory red carpet for skimpy new health plans that will change the insurance landscape in ways that are harmful to former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. (Kenen, 12/19)

Politico: Ryan And McConnell Head For Clash Over Obamacare
Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are about to lock horns over Obamacare — part of a House-Senate clash that needs to be resolved by Friday to avert a government shutdown. McConnell promised moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that he would prop up President Barack Obama’s signature health law in a must-pass, year-end spending bill — so long as she backs tax reform. But Ryan’s more conservative conference is flatly rejecting that idea and urging the Wisconsin Republican to stand firm against his Senate counterpart. (Bade and Haberkorn, 12/19)

The Hill: Abortion Fight Threatens Collins Deal, Risks Shutdown 
A new fight over abortion has thrown a late obstacle into negotiations on the year-end stopgap spending deal days before a possible government shutdown. House Republicans say two ObamaCare measures that Senate GOP leaders are expected to attach to the stopgap as part of a deal with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) must include Hyde Amendment language prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion. (Hellmann and Sullivan, 12/19)

The New York Times: A Federal Ban On Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted
Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal. Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. (McNeil, 12/19)

The Washington Post: U.S. Lifts Research Moratorium On Enhancing Germs’ Danger
The new policy for pathogens capable of creating a pandemic will allow researchers who want to study them to apply for funding through the new process outlined by the Department of Health and Human Services. The end of the moratorium applies to research on the SARS, MERS, influenza and other dangerous viruses. The October 2014 pause was put in place after researchers in Wisconsin and the Netherlands sparked a debate by announcing in 2011 that they had made the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus more contagious in ferrets, which are used as a model for how disease might spread among humans. This kind of research is known as “gain of function” because it introduces new abilities into existing germs. (Bernstein, 12/19)