Los Angeles Times: Trump’s Budget Will Hit Hard For California's Most Vulnerable, Advocates And State Lawmakers Warn
President Trump’s proposed budget would likely result in billions of dollars of cuts to vital health and human services programs in California, state Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor said Tuesday. (Myers, 5/23)

KPCC: California Takes Wait-And-See Approach To Trump's Proposed Medicaid Cuts 
While President Trump's proposed budget would mean a big hit to Medi-Cal, California is opting for a wait-and-see approach to let the political debate in Washington run its course. The president's proposed budget released Tuesday would cut $616 billion from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program over 10 years. (Faust, 5/24)

Sacramento Bee: Health Care For Illegal Immigrants Proposed By California Senator
State Sen. Ricardo Lara doesn’t only want to reconstruct the way health care is delivered and paid for in California. As the debate around publicly funded universal health care heats up in the Capitol, Lara is also seeking to expand the state’s low-income health program to undocumented adults up to age 26. (Hart and Miller, 5/23)

Sacramento Bee: Abortion Reversal Therapy Grows More Popular Despite Doubts
Several California clinics advertise the therapy, claiming to be able to undo the effects of the first dose containing mifepristone, which blocks progesterone production and causes the uterine lining to shed. The second set of pills contains misoprostol, which makes the uterus contract and initiates bleeding and cramping. More than 350 providers nationwide perform abortion reversal therapy, according to proponents of the treatment. (Caiola, 5/23)

KPCC: For Disabled California Kids Receiving Public Services, Who You Are Affects How Much You Get 
The state agencies charged with providing services for Californian kids with developmental disabilities spend far more on their white clients than they do on black and Latino children, according to a new report from the legal advocacy group Public Counsel. At the 19 of the state's 21 agencies, known as "regional centers," officials authorized less spending for their Latino students than their white ones. (Guzman-Lopez, 5/23)

In other news —

KPCC: A Simulation That Tests How Child Welfare Programs Work In The Real World 
A swath of reforms could save the country's child welfare systems some $12 billion, according to a new report by the nonprofit RAND Corporation. The think tank, based in Santa Monica, built a model using data from 24 million children born between 2010 and 2014. With it, they simulated how investments in various types of programs could impact child welfare outcomes. (Palta, 5/23)

Orange County Register: O.C. District Attorney Charges Family, Doctors With Insurance Fraud Related To Sober Living Homes, Urine Tests 
The owners of a string of Southern California sober living homes and two medical doctors are facing insurance fraud charges tied to what authorities allege was a $22 million urine test billing scheme, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday. Six people were charged last week with a variety of felonies – including medical fraud, insurance fraud and money laundering – in connection to the suspected scheme involving recruited sober living residents and alleged front companies that are accused of persuading insurance carriers to pay for unneeded or non-existent urine tests. (Harmonson and Emery, 5/23)

In other news from across the state —

KQED: Valero Outage Prompts Benicia To Consider Industrial Safety Ordinance 
City officials would have greater oversight over the Valero refinery under a proposal set to be unveiled at the Benicia City Council meeting on Tuesday—a potential reform prompted by the major outage at the facility earlier this month. Mayor Elizabeth Patterson is proposing the city develop regulations similar to those in Contra Costa County, home to several refineries. That county’s industrial safety ordinance, considered to be one of the strongest in the country, requires oil refining facilities to undergo safety audits and have risk management plans. (Goldberg, 5/23)

The New York Times: Republicans Will Reject Trump’s Budget, But Still Try To Impose Austerity
Finally some good news for President Trump: His new budget stands absolutely no chance of being enacted by Congress. Moving forward with the cuts outlined in the $4.1 trillion spending plan created by the budget director, Mick Mulvaney, formerly one of the most determined fiscal hawks in Congress, would no doubt have major repercussions and compound the peril of Republicans already facing upheaval over their health care proposals. It would most likely hurt some of the very voters in rural and economically distressed corners of the nation who catapulted Mr. Trump to the White House and Republicans to control of the House and Senate. The effect on those constituents would be quickly felt. (Hulse, 5/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Bipartisan Pushback Greets Trump’s Proposed Budget
“I hate to say it, but I would say the budget was dead before the ink was dry,” Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska), who opposes the budget’s elimination of two programs in his state. Payments to Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, would be cut by more than $600 billion over a decade from levels projected under current law in addition to proposed Medicaid cuts under the House bill repealing and replacing much of the Affordable Care Act. (Davidson, Peterson and Andrews, 5/23)

The Associated Press: Icy Reception To Trump Budget From Fellow Republicans
Longtime GOP Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky declared proposed cuts to safety net and environmental proposals "draconian." "I don't think the president's budget is going anywhere," said Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, asked if he's concerned about the message sent by slashing the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled. (Werner, 5/23)

The Associated Press: Poor And Disabled Big Losers In Trump Budget; Military Wins
The poor and the disabled are big losers in President Donald Trump's $4.1 trillion budget proposal while the Pentagon is a big winner. Trump's plan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 makes deep cuts in safety net programs, including Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. The proposal also includes big cuts in Social Security's disability program. (Ohlemacher, 5/24)

USA Today: Health Care Advocates Say The Trump Budget Plan Would Gut Medicaid
Advocates for low income people struggled to find the words to describe the likely effect of the proposed $800 billion in cuts proposed to Medicaid in the Trump administration's budget released Tuesday. Depending who you ask, it will be devastating or "just awful" to the lowest income Americans, especially children and those with chronic health conditions, mental illness or substance use disorder. (O'Donnell, Saker and Robinson, 5/23)

The Washington Post: Trump Budget Would Cut Health Benefits For Many Lower-Income Kids, Experts Fear
Lower-income children would have their federal health benefits cut sharply under President Trump’s proposed budget, which analysts say could reverse gains that have pushed uninsured rates for this vulnerable population below 5 percent. The shift stems from a combination of factors, including a plan to reduce Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over the next decade and a roughly 20 percent decrease in funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), along with proposed changes to eligibility requirements and the way federal matching funds are calculated. (Eilperin, 5/23)

Politico: Trump Undermines Senate GOP’s Medicaid Backers
A group of Republican senators is fighting desperately to preserve health coverage for millions of low-income constituents who have benefited from Obamacare. And the president of their own party seriously undercut their negotiating position with his budget Tuesday. By proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts in combination with the House-passed health care bill’s more than $800 billion in Medicaid spending reductions, President Donald Trump is effectively throwing in with fiscal conservatives looking to constrain the program’s growth and wind down its coverage as quickly as possible. And that could be perilous for more than a dozen GOP senators who have been meeting for months over how to preserve the law's benefits. (Everett and Cancryn, 5/23)

Los Angeles Times: With Healthcare In Turmoil, Senate Republicans Are Under Pressure To Buck Trump 
Senate Republicans face increasing pressure to rescue health insurance markets and protect coverage for millions of Americans amid growing fears the Trump administration is going let the markets collapse. In recent days, leading hospitals, physician groups, health insurers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have pleaded with the Senate to step in, effectively going around the White House. (Levey and Mascaro, 5/23)

The Washington Post: Fact-Checking A Rosy Portrait Of The American Health Care Act
In a $2 million ad campaign to support the House GOP health plan, the right-leaning American Action Network (AAN) features a California woman named Elizabeth Jacinto who says she suffered under Obamacare and expresses enthusiasm for the American Health Care Act. The ACHA only narrowly passed the House and was greeted lukewarmly by the Senate, so a key part of the effort appears to assist 21 GOP lawmakers who cast a tough vote to support proposal. (Kessler, 5/24)

The Associated Press: Budget Office To Gauge Health Bill Effect On Coverage, Cost
Congressional Republicans are about to learn more about whether their drive to dismantle President Barack Obama's health care law has been worth the political pain they've been experiencing. The Congressional Budget Office planned to release its estimate Wednesday of what impact the GOP's House-passed health care overhaul would have on coverage and premiums. (Fram and Alonso-Zaldivar, 5/24)

Politico: Republicans Gird For CBO Verdict On Obamacare Repeal
Republicans are bracing for a report Wednesday expected to say their Obamacare repeal plan would leave millions of Americans without health insurance, further complicating their efforts to pass legislation quickly. The CBO’s analysis of the bill comes three weeks after House Republicans rushed to vote on the legislation without an update on its cost, or its impact on the nation's uninsured. The agency's score will serve as the unofficial framework for Senate lawmakers negotiating their own version of repeal and will likely help those eager to make big changes. It's also expected to become a rallying point for Democrats critical of an effort that could strip health care from millions. (Cancryn and Ferris, 5/23)