Thursday, October 20, 2022

Latest From California Healthline:

California Healthline Original Stories

Labor Tries City-by-City Push for $25 Minimum Wage at Private Medical Facilities

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West is testing the waters on a $25 minimum wage for support staff at health care facilities in Southern California. Opposition from hospitals and health facilities is driving an expensive battle. (Rachel Bluth, 10/20 )

More News From Across The State

Abortion

Los Angeles Times: Abortion Vs. Inflation: How Election Ads In California Battle For Voters  The congressional election ads bombarding Californians show a sharp dichotomy in priorities — Democrats are laser-focused on abortion access, while Republicans zero in on inflation. GOP candidates paint their rivals as out of touch with the financial hardships facing voters amid economic uncertainty not seen in more than a decade. After the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, many Democrats frame their opponents as antiabortion extremists in a state where voters overwhelmingly support abortion rights. (Mehta and Castleman, 10/19)

Health Care Industry

Sacramento Bee: Sutter Health To Pay Settlement In Illegal Billing Complaint Sacramento-based Sutter Health agreed to pay roughly $13 million to settle allegations that it illegally billed federal agencies for performing tests that actually had been performed by a third-party laboratory. “Government health care programs must be protected, and this office will investigate and pursue health care providers that fail to provide the services paid for by public health care programs,” said Stephanie M. Hinds, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. (Anderson, 10/19)

Los Angeles Times: Life And Death At A Hospice For Homeless People Hanging on a wall at the Inn Between is a photo of John Cal Robb, the note he wrote before he died and the blue plastic butterfly that signaled to his friends that it was his time to go. Robb’s death was especially hard on the inn. He was a jack-of-all-trades, handy with tools and always offering to give fellow residents a ride to medical appointments. His overweight mutt, Boo Boo, still roams the facility — one of only a handful of establishments in the country dedicated to end-of-life care for homeless people. (Mays, 10/20)

The Mercury News: Santa Clara Medical Center Resumes Dog Therapy Program Lorna Brownlie immediately felt better as she ran her fingers through the fur of a 13-year-old rescue poodle named Cooper — a friendly sort who kept her company at Santa Clara Medical Center while she waited to deliver a baby on Monday. “I went from panicked to being in the hospital to, now this is nice to calm down and have a little bit of company,” Brownlie said of Cooper. (Bouscher and Meyer, 10/19)

Stat: FDA Panel Votes That Premature Birth Drug Should Be Withdrawn After an extraordinary three-day hearing, an expert panel of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted on Wednesday to uphold an effort by the regulator to withdraw a controversial drug for preventing premature births. (Silverman, 10/19)

Axios: Controversy Over Preterm Birth Drug Reflects Broader Issues With FDA Approval Process A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation to pull an early birth drug from the market is only the latest controversy surrounding a popular program aimed at getting promising new treatments to patients faster. (Owens, 10/20)

Opioid Crisis

USA Today: CDC Study: Antihistamines May Play Deadly Role In Opioid Epidemic Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified approximately 92,000 drug overdose deaths in 43 states and Washington, D.C., between 2019 and 2020, and found at least 18% involved or tested positive for antihistamines. More than 71% of those deaths included diphenhydramine, commonly known by its brand name Benadryl, according to the study published last week in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. (Rodriguez, 10/19)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego To Spend Opioid Settlement On Addiction Treatment, Housing  Anticipating $100 million in settlements from county lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, San Diego County supervisors on Wednesday released a plan to use the funds to counsel overdose survivors, expand addiction treatment and safely dispose of unused prescription drugs. (Brennan, 10/20)

The Mercury News: Matthew Perry Given 2% Chance Of Survival After Opioid Use Led To Coma In a new interview with People, ahead of the publication of his memoir, the 53-year-old Perry reveals that this crisis was far more grave than previously indicated. Perry explained that his colon burst due to opioid overuse. He ended up in a coma for two weeks and was given little chance of survival. (Ross, 10/19)

AP: 2-Year-Old Overdoses On Fentanyl, Parents Arrested The parents of a toddler who was poisoned by ingesting fentanyl in Northern California were arrested on child endangerment charges, authorities said. The parents of the child took their son to a fire station in the town of Concow Monday and told firefighters they feared he had ingested an unknown substance while in someone else’s care, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Tuesday. (10/20)

LGBTQ+ Health

The New York Times: Social Security Will Now Allow People To Select Their Gender In Records  The Social Security Administration announced on Wednesday that people will now be allowed to select the sex that best aligns with their gender identity in records, a policy change intended to be more inclusive of transgender Americans. (Medina, 10/19)

NBC News: A National 'Don't Say Gay' Law? Republicans Introduce Bill To Restrict LGBTQ-Related Programs Congressional Republicans introduced what some are calling a national version of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill — or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. (Yurcaba and Valle, 10/19)

Around California

AP: Study: Cancer-Causing Gas Leaking From CA Stoves, Pipes  Gas stoves in California homes are leaking cancer-causing benzene, researchers found in a new study published on Thursday, though they say more research is needed to understand how many homes have leaks. In the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology on Thursday, researchers also estimated that over 4 tons of benzene per year are being leaked into the atmosphere from outdoor pipes that deliver the gas to buildings around California — the equivalent to the benzene emissions from nearly 60,000 vehicles. And those emissions are unaccounted for by the state. (Costley, 10/20)

Sacramento Bee: New Invasive Mosquito Species Found In Sacramento County An invasive mosquito species has been newly detected in Sacramento County, local officials announced Wednesday, marking the second such species found in the area since 2019. Aedes albopictus, commonly referred to as the Asian tiger mosquito, was recently located in the backyard of a Carmichael resident who reported being bitten, the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District said in a news release. (McGough, 10/19)

Oaklandside: OUSD Candidates Talk Student Mental Health And Safety At Youth Forum Youth leaders appealed to the audience to vote with students’ priorities in mind, and presented a “student justice platform” they created after surveying 1,400 OUSD students. The platform has three priorities: access to resources and curriculum to support students’ mental and physical well-being, community-centered schools, and essential life-skills to help students navigate life beyond school. (McBride, 10/19)

MPX

CIDRAP: Study Shows Low Antibody Response To Monkeypox Vaccine  A new study in Nature Medicine from a group of researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands shows a low antibody response to the two-dose Jynneos monkeypox vaccine in non-primed people, or those who had not previously received a smallpox vaccine. (Soucheray, 10/19)

Coronavirus

Axios: COVID Played A Role In 1 In 4 Maternal Deaths In 2020 And 2021 COVID-19 contributed to a quarter of maternal deaths in the first two years of the pandemic, with Black pregnant women experiencing a mortality rate nearly three times higher than their white peers, according to an oversight report to Congress released on Wednesday. (Moreno, 10/19)

The Washington Post: White Covid Deaths Increasing In U.S., Surpassing Death Rate Of Blacks  A Post analysis of covid death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from April 2020 through this summer found the racial disparity vanished at the end of last year, becoming roughly equal. And at times during that same period, the overall age-adjusted death rate for White people slightly surpassed that of Black and Latino people. (Johnson and Keating, 10/19)

Bay Area News Group: How The End Of Federal COVID Funding Will Shift Costs To Consumers For most of the pandemic, Americans haven’t had to worry about getting access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests. But as the federal government ends its coverage of those services early next year, the cost of care will be shifted to consumers, insurers and “safety net” providers. (Krieger, 10/20)

Covid Vaccines

AP: US Clears Novavax COVID Booster Dose  The Food and Drug Administration said the new booster option is for people 18 and older who can’t get the updated omicron-targeting Pfizer or Moderna boosters for medical or accessibility reasons -- or who otherwise would not receive a COVID-19 booster shot at all. The FDA specified the additional Novavax shot was to be used as a first booster -- not for people who’ve already had one or more booster doses already — at least six months after completing their primary shots. (10/19)

CNBC: Uninsured Kids Will Still Receive Covid Vaccines For Free After Shots Move To Commercial Market The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a major step Wednesday toward ensuring that kids who are uninsured can receive Covid-19 vaccines for free after the federal government shifts its immunization program to the commercial market. (Kimball, 10/19)

Bloomberg: Low-Income Kids Should Get Free Covid Shots, CDC Panel Says The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted unanimously to recommend Covid-19 shots from Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.’s shot for children six months to 18-years-old. (Rutherford, John Milton and Baumann, 10/19)

ABC News: CDC Corrects Conservative Claim: They Cannot Mandate COVID Vaccines In Schools The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pushing back on a claim made by Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who said on his show this week that a CDC decision was likely coming to force kids to get COVID-19 vaccines in order to attend school. (Haslett, 10/20)