San Francisco Chronicle: Many More Californians Likely To Be Without Health Insurance In Next 5 Years
Up to 800,000 more Californians are likely to be without health coverage in 2023, researchers estimate — reversing a years-long trend of falling uninsured rates in the state following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The number of uninsured Californians is projected to increase to 4.4 million in 2023 unless state officials enact policies to expand coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. (Ho, 11/27)

In other health law news —

Los Angeles Times: In California's Inland Empire, Fewer Than Half Of Jobs Pay A Living Wage
More than 85,000 new jobs — a quarter of payroll expansion from 2010 to 2017 — are in healthcare. The surge is driven by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which brought medical insurance to tens of thousands of Inland Empire residents, many of whom work for companies that don’t provide it. (Roosevelt, 11/28)

San Francisco Chronicle: California’s Right-To-Die Law Upheld By State Appeals Court
A state appeals court rejected a challenge Tuesday to California’s right-to-die law for terminally ill patients, overturning a judge’s ruling in May that had briefly blocked enforcement of the law. The statute, in effect since June 2016, allows a dying adult patient to take lethal drugs that a doctor has prescribed. (Egelko, 11/27)

KPBS: Congressional Hearings Sought Into San Diego VA Human Research 
Rep. Scott Peters on Monday requested a congressional hearing into allegations of dangerous human research at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, as detailed in an inewsource investigation last week. If Peters’ request is granted, Congress will investigate the allegations of two whistleblowers — Martina Buck and Mario Chojkier — who said former San Diego VA division chief Dr. Samuel Ho performed unapproved liver research on alcoholic veterans without their consent, putting their lives at risk. (Racino, 11/27)

In other news —

Sacramento Bee: Army Reserve Maintenance Facility Deemed ‘Unsafe’ By OSHA
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration notified the U.S. Army Reserve 63rd Regional Support Command on Nov. 16 of unsafe working conditions at a south Sacramento maintenance facility after an employee was crushed by machinery earlier this year. A civilian employee was killed on the job May 23 when an automatic lifting system on a utility vehicle failed, crushing him between the frame of the vehicle and the bed of a cargo box, according to OSHA documents. (Moleski, 11/27)

Los Angeles Times: Nurses Reach Tentative Agreement With L.A. County, Averting Strike 
Los Angeles County officials and the labor union representing the county’s nurses reached an 11th-hour deal Monday night to avert a strike that was set to begin Tuesday morning. ...More than 7,000 nurses, including those who worked in emergency rooms, operating rooms and intensive care units, had planned to begin a four-day strike Tuesday morning. (Agrawal, 11/27)

The New York Times: Juul’s New Product: Less Nicotine, More Intense Vapor
Juul Labs has soared to the top of the United States e-cigarette market in just three years with its high-nicotine products that give off just a wisp of vapor. Now, facing public backlash and overseas restrictions, the company is working on a way to lower the nicotine in its pods — but still maintain a potent punch from the addictive chemical. Juul is developing a pod that is higher in vapor, which, experts say, can enhance the rate at which nicotine is absorbed in the body. (Kaplan, 11/27)

KQED: Ag Official: E. Coli Outbreak Could Hurt Salinas Valley Lettuce Growers For Years
The E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce that has sickened dozens of people in the United States and Canada could hurt the Central Coast's farming industry for years, according to one of the region's top agricultural officials. The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that the romaine tied to the outbreak appears to be from the Central Coast, and that romaine produced outside that region is safe to eat as long as it's labeled correctly. (Goldberg, 11/27)

San Jose Mercury News: Tainted Romaine Link To Salinas Valley Frustrates Farmers
Lettuce is king on California’s Central Coast, where row crops and produce stands line the roadways in a region that boasts of being the Salad Bowl of the World. So it struck deep when federal authorities this week linked a rash of severe bacterial infections to romaine lettuce from California’s Central Coast. Now farmers who adopted a host of safety measures after local spinach was tied to a deadly 2006 outbreak fear another battle to win back consumers’ trust. (Woolfolk and Hagemann, 11/27)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Scripps Medical Team Sees True Resilience In Camp Fire Shelters
[Debra] McQuillen, 57, led the five-member disaster team that Scripps Health dispatched to Chico to serve at the direction of the California Emergency Medical Services Authority. She returned to San Diego and her position as chief operating executive for Scripps Mercy Hospital on Nov. 23. The health care executive and registered nurse has deployed on each of the medical missions undertaken by the Scripps Medical Response Team, assisting with recovery efforts related to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, San Diego County’s Witch Fire in 2007 and devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal in 2010 and 2015. (Sisson, 11/27)

In other California news —

Los Angeles Times: Glendale Adventist Continues To Earn High Marks In Patient-Safety Report
Adventist Health Glendale recently received its eighth consecutive A grade from a national hospital-safety organization, while Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital received C grades. The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, gives hospital safety grades twice a year based on categories that measure the quality of patient safety. (Seidman, 11/27)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Nurse Practitioner Pleads Guilty In $65 Million Prescription Fraud Involving San Diego Marines 
A nurse practitioner pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in San Diego to taking part in a kickback scheme that used San Diego County Marines to defraud the military’s health insurance provider out of more than $65 million. Candace Michelle Craven, 52, became the fourth of seven defendants charged in the scheme to plead guilty when she admitted to conducting sham “telemedicine” evaluations that resulted in the issuance of pricey prescriptions through the TRICARE system to patients she never saw or examined in person. (11/27)

San Jose Mercury News: Gunman In Thousand Oaks Mass Shooting Fired 50-Plus Shots, Tossed Multiple Smoke Grenades, But Still No Motive
The gunman who terrorized the packed Borderline Bar and Grill earlier this month fired 50-plus rounds striking 13 victims, with only one surviving, and tossed multiple smoke grenades that added to the confusion that night, Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub told reporters on Tuesday, with officials still searching for the killer’s motive. Ian David Long, 28, of Newbury Park had seven high-capacity, 30-round magazines in his possession, five of which were found fully loaded after the suspect fatally shot 12 people and then took his own life, Ayub said. (Gazzar, 11/28)

The Associated Press: US Waived FBI Checks On Staff At Growing Teen Migrant Camp
The Trump administration has put the safety of thousands of teens at a migrant detention camp at risk by waiving FBI fingerprint checks for their caregivers and short-staffing mental health workers, according to an Associated Press investigation and a new federal watchdog report. None of the 2,100 staffers at a tent city holding more than 2,300 teens in the remote Texas desert are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks, according to a Health and Human Services inspector general memo published Tuesday. (11/27)

ProPublica: Family Separations Are Still Happening At The Texas Border
The Trump administration has quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification. Over the last three months, lawyers at Catholic Charities, which provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in New York, have discovered at least 16 new separation cases. (Thompson, 11/27)

The Associated Press: Texas Detention Camp For Teen Migrants Keeps Growing
The Trump administration announced in June it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant children in this isolated corner of the Texas desert. Less than six months later, the facility has expanded into a detention camp holding thousands of teenagers — and it shows every sign of becoming more permanent. (11/27)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: At FDA, A New Goal, Then A Push For Speedy Device Reviews
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren was adamant: The United States would never cut corners to fast-track the approval of medical devices. "We don't use our people as guinea pigs in the U.S.," Shuren said, holding firm as the new director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's medical devices division. Again and again in 2011 — four times in all — Shuren was summoned before Congress. Lawmakers accused the agency of being too slow and too demanding in reviewing new devices like heart valves and spinal implants, driving U.S. manufacturers overseas where products faced less rigorous review. Each time, he pushed back. And yet the next year, Shuren and his team adopted an approach that surprised even some of his closest colleagues: The FDA would strive to be "first in the world" to approve devices it considered important to public health. (11/27)

Modern Healthcare: CMS Has A Plan If Federal Judge Strikes Down ACA 
The CMS has a plan to protect pre-existing conditions and Americans' access to care even if a federal judge overturns the Affordable Care Act, CMS Adminstrator Seema Verma said Tuesday. A slew of Republican state attorneys general have challenged the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, and that lawsuit may be decided any day. (Dickson, 11/27)

Modern Healthcare: ACA Reinsurance Lowers Premiums, But Fails To Attract More Insurers 
Reinsurance programs have successfully stabilized individual insurance premiums and boosted enrollment in Alaska, Minnesota and Oregon, but the programs have been less effective at attracting more insurers to sell individual plans in those states, according to a report released Tuesday. The three states were the first to implement reinsurance programs in 2018 under Section 1332 waivers in hopes of shoring up their individual markets amid rising premiums and dwindling insurer participation. Their efforts have proven mostly successful, illustrating the value of pursuing state solutions when federal policy is uncertain, researchers at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms concluded. (Livingston, 11/27)

The Hill: Generic EpiPen Not Any Cheaper Than Existing Version
A generic competitor to the EpiPen won’t cost any less than the version already on the market, despite the Trump administration touting it as a cheaper alternative. Teva Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday said its drug is now available in limited quantities in the United States, for a wholesale cost of $300. The drug already on the market from original manufacturer Mylan also costs $300. (Weixel, 11/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Big Tech Expands Footprint In Health
Amazon.com Inc. is starting to sell software that mines patient medical records for information doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs. The move is the latest by a big technology company into health care, an industry where it sees opportunities for growth. The market for storing and analyzing health information is worth more than $7 billion a year, according to research firm Grand View Research, a business in which International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson Health and UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Optum already compete. (Evans and Stevens, 11/27)

USA Today: Hundreds In The United States Die Each Year From Alcohol Withdrawal
About 16 million people in the United States have alcohol use disorder, which the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism define as "compulsive alcohol use, loss of control over alcohol intake, and a negative emotional state when not using." For those experiencing the most serious symptom of withdrawal – the shaking, shivering, sweating and confusion of delirium tremens, or the DTs – the death rate has been estimated as high as 4 percent, or 1 in 25. Of patients admitted to one hospital in Spain with alcohol withdrawal syndrome from 1987 to 2003, a research team there found, 6.6 percent died. That's roughly 1 in 15. (O'Donnell, 11/27)

The New York Times: Chinese Scientist Who Says He Edited Babies’ Genes Defends His Work
A Chinese scientist who claims to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies said at a conference on Wednesday that his actions were safe and ethical, and he asserted that he was proud of what he had done. But many other scientists seemed highly skeptical, with a conference organizer calling his actions irresponsible. “For this specific case, I feel proud, actually,” the scientist, He Jiankui, said at an international conference on genome editing in Hong Kong. (Belluck, 11/28)

The Washington Post: He Jiankui Defends Gene Editing Research, New Baby On The Way
“We should, for millions of families with inherited disease, show compassion,” he told a packed audience at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. “If we have this technology, we can make it available earlier. We can help earlier those people in need.” He’s scientific talk chronicled the development of this line of research, from early mouse experiments to primates and eventually a human clinical trial. He said that eight couples were enrolled in the trial, but one dropped out. All had fathers with well-controlled HIV and mothers who were not infected. (Shih and Johnson, 11/28)

The Associated Press: Scientist Claiming Gene-Edited Babies Reports 2nd Pregnancy
A Chinese researcher who claims to have helped make the world's first genetically edited babies says a second pregnancy may be underway. The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, revealed the possible pregnancy Wednesday while making his first public comments about his controversial work at an international conference in Hong Kong. (11/27)

NPR: Chinese Scientist He Jiankui Rebuked By Colleagues Over Gene Experiments
As soon as He finished his initial 15-minute presentation, American Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore, who chairs the conference, got up to speak. Baltimore noted that scientists had agreed that it would be irresponsible to try to create genetically modified babies until there was much more research to make sure it was necessary and safe, and a consensus had been reached it was prudent. (Stein, 11/28)

The Associated Press: Gene-Editing Chinese Scientist Kept Much Of His Work Secret
The Chinese scientist who says he helped make the world's first gene-edited babies veered off a traditional career path, keeping much of his research secret in pursuit of a larger goal — making history. He Jiankui's outsized aspirations began to take shape in 2016, the year after another team of Chinese researchers sparked global debate with the revelation that they had altered the DNA of human embryos in the lab. He soon set his mind on pushing the boundaries of medical ethics even further. (11/27)

The Associated Press: Gene-Editing Scientist Under Scrutiny By Chinese Officials
The National Health Commission on Monday ordered local officials in Guangdong province —where Shenzhen is located — to investigate He's actions. China's state broadcaster, CCTV, reported Tuesday that if the births are confirmed, He's case will be handled "in accordance with relevant laws and regulations." It's not clear if he could face possible criminal charges. (11/27)

Stat: Sparse Data On CRISPR'd Embryos Leave Questions Unanswered 
While the world waited for He Jiankui to back up his claim of CRISPR’ing two babies to an international summit of genome editors in Hong Kong on Wednesday morning, STAT asked genomics experts to review the only data He has publicly revealed, in a spreadsheet on the Chinese Clinical Trials Registry. Their verdict: The quality of the data is low, and there’s too little of it, to draw any firm conclusions about what He’s team accomplished. And there is no proof that the two embryos described in the spreadsheet were used to produce the twins whose birth He announced earlier this week. (Begley and Cooney, 11/27)

Stat: He Took A Crash Course In Bioethics, Then Created CRISPR Babies 
For someone who has caused a worldwide uproar over what many fellow scientists consider an ethical outrage, He Jiankui of China spent a remarkable amount of time discussing his work — which he claims led to the births of the first babies whose genomes had been edited when they were IVF embryos — with bioethicists, policy experts, and social scientists. Two of them are father and son: Dr. William Hurlbut of Stanford University, a member of the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics in the early 2000s, and J. Benjamin Hurlbut of Arizona State University, a biomedical historian. (Begley, 11/27)

Stat: UC Berkeley Expert Warned China Scientist Against Gene-Editing In 2017
A year before He Jiankui shocked the world with claims that he had created gene-edited babies, the Chinese scientist confided his plans in a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The researcher, Mark DeWitt, told no one. But his response at the time was unmistakable: Don’t do it. “I thought it was a terrible idea, with or without any kinds of approvals. I told him that. I said: ‘You’re not ready,’” Dewitt told STAT. (Robbins, 11/27)