Santa Rosa Press Democrat: President Trump’s Repeated Efforts To Derail Obamacare Worries Sonoma County Health Care Leaders
Gov. Gavin Newsom has called President Trump’s two-year barrage to undermine the Affordable Care Act “vandalism,” while other state and national health care experts have described it as “sabotage,” a “slow bleed,” or even “death by a thousand cuts.” Local and state health officials, and now the newly sworn-in California governor, have sought to blunt the continuing onslaught from Trump and congressional Republicans to repeal or undermine the nation’s health care law. Sonoma County health care leaders say the stakes are in the millions of dollars for hospitals and community clinics that have benefited from the law since it was fully implemented in 2014. (Espinoza, 1/20)

KQED: Should UC And CSU Campuses Be Required To Provide Abortion Pills? Lawmakers Revisit Issue
Public university health centers in California do not perform abortions, but lawmakers will soon begin debate on a bill — SB 24 — that would require health centers at all 34 University of California and California State University campuses to provide medication abortions. It's the second attempt at this bill, after then-Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a previous version last fall. (Dembosky, 1/22)

Elsewhere in Sacramento —

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Plans To Move California Juvenile Justice Division Out Of Corrections Department 
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that he intends to shift control of the state’s Juvenile Justice Division away from corrections officials to government health and human services providers, a move he called long overdue and necessary to build on past efforts to divert children and teens from a path to prison. Under the proposal, first unveiled as part of his January budget, the California Health and Human Services Agency would oversee more than 660 young offenders, the majority held at a camp in Pine Grove and three detention centers in Stockton and Camarillo. (Ulloa, 1/22)

Los Angeles Times: LAUSD Teachers' Strike Ends. Teachers To Return To Classrooms Wednesday
The Los Angeles teachers union ended its strike Tuesday night, based on overwhelming support for a contract agreement with the school district, union leaders said. Teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians will be back in their classrooms Wednesday, said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “A vast supermajority are voting yes for the agreement that we made,” said Caputo-Pearl, who also acknowledged that many votes still were being tallied. (Blume and Kohli, 1/22)

In other news —

Fresno Bee: Fresno County Court Staff Agree To Contract, End Strike
The court reporters and other support staff at the Fresno County Superior Court have agreed to a labor contract with the court, ending a strike that began last week. The Service Employees International Union Local 521, which represents about 275 court employees, announced the resolution Tuesday afternoon. (Appleton, 1/22)

Capital Public Radio: Stockton Unified Agrees To Address Discriminatory Discipline Practices Following State DOJ Investigation 
The Stockton Unified School District has agreed to address discrimination against minority students and those with disabilities when it comes to discipline following a California Department of Justice investigation. The investigation found that the district used school police often unnecessarily to settle problems in the classroom. (Ibarra, 1/22)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Scientists Decry Beverage Industry’s Preemption Of Soda Taxes
Doctors at UCSF have taken aim at the sugar-sweetened beverage industry, warning that a political tactic it has employed in California and three other states could have a devastating impact on public health. The country’s first voter-approved soda tax was passed in Berkeley in 2014. Yet California is also one of four states that has since banned cities and localities from imposing new taxes on sugary beverages, because of pressure from the soda industry. (Duggan, 1/22)

In other public health news —

LAist: It's 2019, Let's Just Say Out Loud That Breastfeeding Is Hard
As you probably know, there is no shortage of boob science about the nutritional benefits of breastmilk and its role in reducing the risk of developing things like diabetes and asthma in kids. For moms, it's linked to a lower risk of breast and ovarian cancers. In short, it's healthy.There's also no shortage of reasons why some women don't breastfeed. (Faust, 1/23)

The New York Times: Supreme Court Revives Transgender Ban For Military Service
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the Trump administration’s request to allow it to bar most transgender people from serving in the military while cases challenging the policy make their way to the court. The administration’s policy reversed a 2016 decision by the Obama administration to open the military to transgender service members. It generally prohibits transgender people from military service but makes exceptions for those already serving openly and those willing to serve “in their biological sex.” (Liptak, 1/22)

Reuters: Trump Transgender Troop Limits Can Take Effect, Top Court Decides
The decision, with the court's five conservative justices prevailing over its four liberals, granted the Trump administration's request to put on hold injunctions issued by federal judges against enforcement of the policy while a challenge to its legality continues in lower courts. The court did not resolve the underlying question of the legality of the Republican president's plan, which reversed the landmark 2016 policy of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama to let transgender people for the first time serve openly in the armed forces and receive medical care to transition genders. (1/22)

The Washington Post: Supreme Court Allows Trump Restrictions On Transgender Troops In Military To Go Into Effect As Legal Battle Continues
The courts were considering a policy developed by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who issued a plan to bar from the military those who identify with a gender different from their birth gender and are seeking to transition. Mattis’s plan makes exceptions for about 900 transgender individuals who are already serving openly and for others who say they will serve in accordance with their birth gender. (Barnes and Lamothe, 1/22)

NPR: Supreme Court Revives Trump's Ban On Transgender Military Personnel, For Now
The transgender ban is being revived more than a year after a federal court in Washington, D.C., first blocked it in October 2017. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that trans members of the military had "a strong case that the president's ban would violate their Fifth Amendment rights," as NPR reported. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted Kollar-Kotelly's injunction earlier this month, concluding that the ban had been substantially revised by the time it was instituted by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in March 2018. But other federal courts had also ruled against the ban — and until Tuesday, those other injunctions remained in place. (Welna and Chappell, 1/22)

The Associated Press: Q&A: Impact Of Supreme Court Decision On Transgender Troops
Some questions and answers about what the high court did. (1/23)

And Ruth Bader Ginsburg's recent surgery prompts this history of Supreme Court justices' health —

NPR: Ruth Bader Ginsburg And The Murky History Of Supreme Court Justices' Health
For the first time in her 25-year career on the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not on the bench to start the new year. After the 85-year-old justice was operated on for lung cancer, she decided to work from home rather than return to the court two weeks after surgery. She's expected to make a full recovery and be back at the court soon. A fair amount is known about Ginsburg's cancers and surgery, but the history of Supreme Court justices and their health is murkier. (Totenberg, 1/23)

The Associated Press: Poll: Support For 'Medicare-For-All' Fluctuates With Details
"Medicare-for-all" makes a good first impression, but support plunges when people are asked if they'd pay higher taxes or put up with treatment delays to get it. The survey, released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, comes as Democratic presidential hopefuls embrace the idea of a government-run health care system, considered outside the mainstream of their party until Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders made it the cornerstone of his 2016 campaign. President Donald Trump is opposed, saying "Medicare-for-all" would "eviscerate" the current program for seniors. (1/23)

The Hill: Poll: 56 Percent Of Public Supports Medicare For All
Progressives are pushing the new Democratic House majority to move forward on the idea, and many Democratic presidential hopefuls have signed onto the idea as well. More centrist Democratic lawmakers remain opposed to the proposal, however. The poll finds that there are wide swings in support and opposition to the idea depending on how the question is asked. (Sullivan, 1/23)

The Washington Post: Democrats And Their Voters Have Shifted Left As 2020 Nears. They’re Betting The Rest Of The Country Follows.
The last time Democrats scouted for a presidential nominee who could strip the White House from Republicans, the party supported additional fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Same-sex marriage was illegal in 49 states, and few Democratic candidates were pushing to change that. And only one long-shot presidential hopeful talked about “Medicare-for-all.” A dozen years later, Democratic candidates and potential ones now argue that more barricades are not what is needed at the border. Candidates who once dodged questions about same-sex marriage now support it and are calling for greater protection of transgender individuals. “Medicare-for-all” — or something like it — has become standard, along with promises to combat racism, sexism and global climate change. (Weigel and Johnson, 1/22)

The Hill: HHS Chief Refuses To Testify On Child Separation Policy
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is refusing to have secretary Alex Azar testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the administration’s child separation policy, according to the panel’s chairman. “[Azar’s] denial to appear before the Committee in the coming weeks on the family separation policy is unacceptable, and we are going to get him here at some point one way or another,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said in a statement. (Weixel, 1/22)

In other national health care news —

Politico: Dems To Push Bill Raising Minimum Age To Buy Assault-Style Weapons
Democrats are introducing a bill that would raise the minimum age to buy assault-style weapons, the latest in a multipronged effort to address a string of recent mass shootings and stifle the gun lobby’s sway since taking back the House majority. The bipartisan bill, expected to be introduced by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) Wednesday, would prohibit anyone younger than 21 from buying semi-automatic rifles, with exceptions for active duty military personnel and some police officers. In most states, anyone 18 or older can buy what’s known as an assault-style weapon, even though the federal purchasing age for handguns is 21. (Caygle and Ferris, 1/23)

The New York Times: V.A. Wait Times Now Shorter Than For Private Doctors
Wait times for an appointment at Veterans Affairs hospitals have decreased since 2014 and are now, on average, shorter than those in the private sector, a new study shows. Researchers used V.A. data to calculate wait times for about 17 million appointments. The public sector data came from a survey conducted by a physicians’ search firm in nearly 2,000 medical offices in 30 major and midsize metropolitan areas. (Bakalar, 1/22)

The Washington Post: Anonymous ‘Ghost Ship’ Is Among Groups Flooding Drug Pricing Debate
The political war over prescription drug practices is spawning a frenzy of activity by outside lobbying groups, some with names that mask their ties to industry and one that has gone to great lengths to disguise its origins. The increase in advertising, advocacy and pressure tactics is aimed at thwarting some efforts to control drug costs proposed in the Democratic-controlled House, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, as well as ideas pursued by the Trump administration to curb prices. (Rowland and Stein, 1/22)

Reuters: Walgreens Pays $269.2 Million To Settle U.S. Civil Fraud Lawsuits
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc will pay $269.2 million to settle two whistleblower lawsuits accusing it of civil fraud for overbilling federal healthcare programs over a decade, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Tuesday. The pharmacy chain will pay $209.2 million to resolve claims it improperly billed Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs from 2006 to 2017 for hundreds of thousands of insulin pens it dispensed to patients it knew did not need them. (1/22)

The New York Times: What Is Toxic Masculinity?
For decades, we used terms like “macho,” “red-blooded” or “machismo” to describe the kind of hulking masculinity that men were, on some level, expected to aspire to. Now we have “toxic masculinity” — an expression once relegated to women’s studies classrooms that suddenly seems to be everywhere. (Salam, 1/22)

The New York Times: To Fight Fatty Liver, Avoid Sugary Foods And Drinks
Overweight children with fatty liver disease sharply reduced the amount of fat and inflammation in their livers by cutting soft drinks, fruit juices and foods with added sugars from their diets, a rigorous new study found. The new research, published in JAMA on Tuesday, suggests that limiting sugary foods and drinks may be a promising lifestyle strategy to help alleviate a devastating condition linked to the obesity crisis that is spreading rapidly in adults and children. An estimated 80 million to 100 million Americans have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which causes the liver to swell with dangerous levels of fat. Roughly seven million of those are adolescents and teenagers. (O'Connor, 1/22)