CALIFORNIA WATCH DECEMBER 7, 2015

California Healthline: Advocates Ratchet Up Pressure on Blue Shield to Increase Foundation Funding About a dozen consumer advocate groups added their voices last week to a letter urging Blue Shield of California to increase its annual funding to the Blue Shield Foundation, as a condition of approval by the Department of Managed Health Care for its merger with Care 1st Health Plan. (Gorn, 12/7)

NPR: In California, Aid Withers for People with Developmental Disabilities Surrounded by stacks of packages in a brightly lit room, Michael Palone gingerly folded a box and taped it shut. His eyes averted, he shuffled to the front of the warehouse to retrieve scissors, skirting by people and tables in his path. Palone, 26, has Asperger's and mild autism that makes it nearly impossible for him to socialize with others and adjust to the constant changes of a full time job. Instead, he assembles packages with about 40 others at a Union City, Calif., work center run by The Arc of Alameda County. (Hellmann, 12/4)

CAPITOL HILL WATCH

The Washington Post: Pressure Mounts for a Year-End Spending Deal A bipartisan group of negotiators worked through the weekend in hopes of striking a year-end spending deal by Monday so Congress has enough time to pass the legislation before Dec. 11 and avert a government shutdown. The weekend sessions came after Democrats rejected an initial proposal from Republicans last week that included dozens of policy riders that GOP lawmakers wanted to attach to the must-pass legislation. ... The biggest issue facing negotiations on the omnibus spending bill is the policy riders being pushed by Republicans. ... Democrats said they will not budge on any riders aimed at attacking abortion rights, curbing funds for Planned Parenthood or undermining President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. (Snell, 12/7)

The New York Times: Martin Shkreli, the Bad Boy of Pharmaceuticals, Hits Back A former hedge fund manager, Mr. Shkreli drew the wrath of consumers, became a talking point in the presidential campaign, and spurred federal and state inquiries as well as a dialogue about how and whether to control rising drug prices. As proof of Mr. Shkreli’s toxicity, Bernie Sanders rejected his $2,700 campaign donation, turning it over to a health clinic instead. ... Mr. Shkreli’s price increase is likely to take another pummeling at a Senate committee hearing investigating skyrocketing drug prices next Wednesday. Rather than cower as he takes a beating, Mr. Shkreli seems to relish his time in the ring. (Creswell and Pollack, 12/5)

MARKETPLACE

Kaiser Health News: Jobs for Medical Scribes are Rising Rapidly but Standards Lag A national campaign for electronic health records is driving business for at least 20 companies with thousands of workers ready to help stressed doctors log the details of their patients’ care — for a price. Nearly 1 in 5 physicians now employ medical scribes, many provided by a vendor, who join doctors and patients in examination rooms. They enter relevant information about patients’ ailments and doctors’ advice into a computer, the preferred successor to jotting notes on a clipboard as doctors universally once did. (Gillespie, 12/7)

The Washington Post: Doctors Prescribe Old-Fashioned House Calls When Treating the Old and Frail A study published last year in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, supported by other research, found that home-based primary care lowered costs as well as emergency room visits and hospitalization rates while increasing patients’ satisfaction with care. Now, a group of doctors — including Hernandez’s — is pushing to bring house calls to the nation’s 2 million oldest, frailest and costliest patients, saying it has the potential to save the government billions of dollars. Independence at Home was developed by a group of doctors around the country who were already making house calls to such patients. (Bahrampour, 12/6)

Los Angeles Times: HMO Giant Kaiser Eyes Expansion and Agrees to Buy Washington State Insurer Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente has agreed to acquire a big insurer in Washington state and signaled the pursuit of similar deals across the country. The nonprofit HMO and health system said Friday that it was buying Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative, which insures nearly 600,000 people. Because the deal involves two nonprofit organizations, Kaiser said it would contribute $1.8 billion to a new foundation in Washington to complete the transaction. (Terhune, 12/4)

The Washington Post: New Patient Coalition Aims to Take On Cost of Health Care, Access to Quality Treatment A group seeking to lead a broad national effort by consumers to make health care more affordable and available has formed in Washington, contending that even with more widespread insurance coverage under the , many people cannot obtain the care they need. Partners for Better Care claims it already represents 10 million patients through affiliations with other advocacy groups such as AIDS United, the Parkinson’s Action Network and United Cerebral Palsy. The organization also is hoping to enlist larger health care advocacy groups. (Bernstein, 12/4)

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

The Washington Post's Wonkblog: Why the U.S. Should Pay Irish Drug Prices if Pfizer Wants to Pay Irish Tax Rates Last week, the drug giant Pfizer announced its plan to become an Irish drug company, moving its corporate headquarters abroad as part of a complex business maneuver that would allow it to skirt billions in U.S. taxes. That came on top of more general outrage over the soaring prices of many drugs — made by Pfizer and other companies — which are often many fold higher in America than overseas. Pharmaceutical companies often claim that the profits they earn from high U.S. prices fuels U.S. innovation. But that’s not the whole story. Non-U.S. drug companies also benefit from our high prices, and that would be true for the new Ireland-based Pfizer too. (Dr. Peter Bach, 12/6)

DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP's Communications Department.

Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content.

CALIFORNIA WATCH DECEMBER 8, 2015

California Healthline: Hearing Looks at Acquisition of Insurer At a public hearing on Monday in Sacramento, insurers made their case in front of officials from the Department of Managed Health Care for Centene health insurance company's proposal to buy Woodland Hills-based Health Net for $6.8 billion. (Gorn, 12/8)

KQED: Catholic Hospital in Redding Denies two Women Tubal Ligation Redding’s Mercy Medical Center has refused — for the second time in four months — to allow doctors to perform sterilization on two pregnant women. The women requested the procedure be done immediately after they give birth next year. The hospital cited religious reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union and Physicians for Reproductive Health have sent a letter to Dignity Health, which owns Mercy Medical, saying they will go to court if the issue is not resolved by Wednesday evening. (Aliferis, 12/7)

CAPITOL HILL WATCH

The Huffington Post: Republicans Insist Planned Parenthood Committee isn't Specifically Targeting Planned Parenthood Ever since a gunman on a shooting rampage killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic late last month, Republicans on the select panel convened to investigate Planned Parenthood have been insisting that the committee isn't targeting the nation's largest abortion provider. In the wake of the Colorado Springs shooting, Democrats have called for the committee to be disbanded. ... The Republican response has been to point out that the October resolution establishing the special committee referred generally to "abortion providers," but not Planned Parenthood. (Lachman, 12/7)

The Associated Press: Stewart Returns to 'Daily Show' to Push 9/11 Health Act Comedian Jon Stewart has returned to "The Daily Show" where he made a push to renew a law that provides health benefits for first responders who became ill after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. ... Proponents of the law are seeking its permanent extension, but some Republicans have opposed that, saying they want a chance to periodically review it and make sure it's operating soundly. (12/7)

PUBLIC HEALTH AND EDUCATION

Reuters: State Policies Deter Doctors from Reporting Drug-Endangered Babies When Congress adopted the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act in 2003, the intent – spelled out in the law – was to ensure protection for drug-dependent newborns, not to punish mothers battling addiction. But today, a referral to child protection services in some states can put a mother in legal peril – a reality that dissuades some doctors from reporting cases of newborns in drug withdrawal no matter what the federal provisions intended. (Wilson and Shiffman, 12/8)

USA Today: Public Health gets Least Money, but does most Just three cents of each U.S. health care dollar goes to public health even though it plays a far bigger role in keeping Americans well than medical care, a top federal official said at a forum sponsored by USA TODAY and insurer Cigna. State and local public health departments were hit especially hard by the recession and haven't recovered, said physician Karen DeSalvo, acting assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services. (O'Donnell and Ungar, 12/7)

The Washington Post: Superbug known as ‘Phantom Menace’ on the Rise in U.S. A particularly dangerous superbug, dubbed the "phantom menace" by scientists, is on the rise in the United States, according to a report Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This superbug's strains belong to the family of bacteria known as CRE, which are difficult to treat because they are often resistant to most antibiotics. They are often deadly, too, in some instances killing up to 50 percent of patients who become infected, according to the CDC. Health officials have called CRE among the country's most urgent public health threats. (Sun, 12/4)

HEALTH LAW ISSUES AND IMPLEMENTATION

Kaiser Health News: Mom left me Money, but does Uncle Sam get it as Repayment for My Subsidy? This week, I fielded questions about the circumstances under which people have to repay premium tax credits for health insurance purchased on the marketplaces and about Medicare coverage of dental services. (Andrews, 12/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Health-Law Avoiders won’t get Reprieve this Time Around Federal officials said Monday that if uninsured people don’t obtain coverage within the health law’s official enrollment period, which ends Jan. 31, they won’t get an extension to avoid the law’s penalty for going without insurance this time around. Earlier this year, the Obama administration offered uninsured people a reprieve if they missed the sign-up deadline for 2015 coverage, originally set at Feb. 15. People were given through April to sign up if they said they had learned about the penalty for going uninsured only when they filed their taxes. (Radnofsky, 12/7)

Modern Healthcare: Waivers are new Battlefront in Republican-Led States that Expanded Providers, patients and lawmakers in Arizona and Iowa are urging the CMS to reject Medicaid changes proposed by Republican governors. But in , the same array of stakeholders wants the CMS to allow conservative provisions to save the state's Medicaid expansion. That's because when Michigan lawmakers passed legislation in 2013 expanding Medicaid eligibility in the state, they included a clause requiring the expansion to sunset in 2016 unless the CMS accepts provisions such as sharp increases in premiums and cost-sharing obligations. (Dickson, 12/7)

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

Health Affairs: The Impact of New Hepatitis C Drugs on National Health Spending Many analysts had predicted ... an increased health spending growth rate for 2014 due to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). ... However, the huge jump in prescription drug spending that occurred in 2014 was unforeseen. In 2013, spending on prescription drugs grew by only 2.4 percent, but in 2014, it skyrocketed to 12.2 percent. Some of this increase in spending on prescription drugs is due to expanded coverage, and some is due to the acceleration in prescription drug prices. A major source of this growth was the introduction of Sovaldi in December 2013, and Harvoni in October 2014. Both are very expensive breakthrough drugs for the treatment of hepatitis C. (Charles Roehrig, 12/7)

National Review: A Clear Path for Repealing and Replacing Obamacare is Coming into View House and Senate leaders deserve a lot of credit for putting together a bill that repeals much of Obamacare and skillfully navigating it through both chambers using the budget-reconciliation process. That’s no small achievement, though President Obama is sure to veto the bill as soon as it reaches his desk. But it’s likely to be only a partial preview of what could happen in 2017 — if a Republican wins the White House. It is telling that the bill Congress is poised to send to President Obama delays repeal of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and health-insurance subsidies for two years. That way, Republican senators could promise their constituents that a replacement for Obamacare would be put in place before the federal funding for their plans was withdrawn. (James C. Capretta, 12/6)

DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP's Communications Department.

Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content.

CALIFORNIA WATCH DECEMBER 9, 2015

California Healthline: Poverty Hitting One in Six Californians The economic recovery in California has not reached a sizable percentage of the population, with more than 16% of Californians living in poverty, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the California Budget and Policy Center. In most California counties, the poverty rate increased from 2007 to 2014. Of the 40 California counties with available data, 32 had higher poverty rates last year than they did in 2007 before the state's recession began, the study said. (Gorn, 12/9)

The Associated Press: Report: 3 California Health Organizations Had Data Risks Three Medi-Cal health providers risked having data stolen on thousands of patients because of security problems ranging from outdated anti-virus software to retaining the computer passwords of fired workers, according to a federal study released Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Services reviewed information system controls for three managed-care organizations from 2012 to 2015 and found 74 potentially high-risk vulnerabilities, according to a report from the inspector general's office. (Jablon, 12/8)

CAPITOL HILL WATCH

Capital Public Radio: Senate Questions 'Egregious' Price Hikes for Specialty Medicines The Senate Special Committee on Aging is holding the first of a series of hearings Wednesday into why the prices of medicines that have been on the market for decades are suddenly climbing. The investigation by the Senate committee, led by Maine Republican Susan Collins and Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, is focusing on four pharmaceutical companies that bought the rights to certain drugs, and then dramatically increased the prices. (Kodjak, 12/9)

Politico: No Budget Deal in Sight as Deadline Looms Right now, there's no deal in sight to fund the federal government. ... In all likelihood, the House will vote Friday on a short-term government funding measure to avoid a shutdown, giving Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi more time to negotiate. (Sherman, French and Bresnahan, 12/8)

HEALTH ISSUES AND IMPLEMENTATION

The New York Times: Americans Who Don’t Buy Health Coverage Face Heftier Fine in ’16, Analysis Finds Americans who remain uninsured in 2016 despite having the option of buying health coverage through an Affordable Care Act marketplace will owe an average tax penalty of $969 per household, a new analysis has found. That amount is substantially higher than the average estimated penalty of $661 for those who went uninsured in 2015, according to the analysis by the . But it remains to be seen how effective the rising fine will be in persuading the roughly 10.5 million uninsured Americans who are eligible for marketplace coverage to buy it. (Goodnough, 12/9)

Kaiser Health News: State Obamacare Exchanges ‘Sustainable’ Without Federal Aid, Official Tells Congress State insurance exchanges are healthy financially even without the federal funding that ran out this year, a top Obama administration official told a House subcommittee Tuesday. “All states are sustainable today,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (Galewitz, 12/9)

The Fiscal Times: Obamacare Won’t Really Cost the U.S. 2 Million Jobs The Congressional Budget Office released a new working paper this week predicting that the Affordable Care Act will have a negative effect on the size of the U.S. labor supply over the coming decade. ... But the CBO isn’t looking specifically at job loss. It’s making projections about aggregate hours worked and the total number of workers who choose to stay in the workforce: “The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise,” the agency wrote. That is, fewer work hours will be logged and paid for, the rough equivalent of 2 million jobs. But those two things — reduced hours across the economy and total jobs — are different things. (Pianin, 12/8)

MARKETPLACE

Kaiser Health News: Medical Training So Dark Many Students Depict Supervisors as Monsters – Literally The study by researchers from several leading medical schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge in England, added to a body of work showing that the stress of training can cause depression. And it’s not just the doctors themselves who suffer – patients should worry, too. Depression in residents 'has been linked to poor-quality patient care and increased medical errors,' the researchers note. (Rovner, 12/8)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: GSK Exec: More Voices Make Drug Healthcare Cost Debate Different from 1990s The ever-more public debate about the price of prescription drugs and healthcare overall is not the first such debate. But GlaxoSmithKline's Jamey Millar, senior vice president for managed markets and government affairs, said Thursday in Philadelphia that this discussion feels different from the early-to-mid 1990s when then-First Lady Hillary Clinton led an effort to reform how America's expensive, inefficient, gap-ridden, dysfunctional healthcare system operates. And the difference, Millar said, is only partially a function of Clinton running for president. (Sell, 12/5)

PUBLIC HEALTH AND EDUCATION

Los Angeles Times: To Foster Public Health, Track Law Enforcement-Related Deaths, Researchers Urge The death of people at the hands of police officers affects not only the individuals involved but the well- being of the community at large, and a tally of such fatalities can and should be maintained for public health purposes, a group of Harvard University researchers has written. Wading into the intersection of several highly charged public debates, a group of public health researchers has written that law enforcement-related deaths -- both of police officers and of members of the public -- are not strictly a criminal justice concern. (Healy, 12/8)

USA Today: Top U.S. Lab Regulator Replaced in Wake of Incidents with Bioterror Pathogens The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has replaced its longtime director of national lab regulation in the wake of several high-profile incidents involving bioterror pathogens and an internal review that identified areas of improvement for the oversight program, USA TODAY has learned. (Young, 12/8)

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

Los Angeles Times: One-Sixth of Americans Have Trouble Paying Medical Bills. That's Good News. The U.S. government reported Tuesday that some 44.5 million Americans experienced problems paying their medical bills in the first half of this year. That may not sound encouraging, but perspective is everything: In 2011, the figure was 56.5 million. Overall, the percentage of people living in families facing trouble with their medical bills fell to 16.5% in the first six months of 2015 from 21.3% in 2011. The reason for the steady, linear drop in financial stress in strain from medical bills is inescapable. It's the Affordable Care Act. (Michael Hiltzik, 12/8)

The Huffington Post: The Biggest Blow to Obamacare Yet Could Come from Democrats Congress is on the brink of taking a big bite out of the Affordable Care Act, after more than five years of mostly futile efforts by Republicans to weaken or repeal the law. Both houses now seem intent on approving a two-year delay in the introduction of the law’s “Cadillac tax” -- a controversial levy on expensive health insurance plans -- as part of must-pass legislation now moving through Congress. But while Republicans are happily supporting the delay as a blow to Obamacare, multiple sources privy to negotiations say it's the Democratic leaders in Congress, responding to pressure from labor unions, who have insisted on acting now. (Jonathan Cohn and Jeffrey Young, 12/8)

DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP's Communications Department.

Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content.

CALIFORNIA WATCH DECEMBER 10, 2015

Kaiser Health News: California to Revamp Addiction Treatment for Medicaid Recipients Kaiser Health News staff writer Anna Gorman reports: "California is overhauling its substance abuse treatment system for low-income people, embarking on a massive experiment to create a smoother path for addicts from detox through recovery. The state is the first to receive federal permission to revamp drug and alcohol treatment for beneficiaries of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California. Through what’s known as a drug waiver, state officials will have new spending flexibility as they try to improve outcomes and reduce social and financial costs of people with substance abuse disorders." (Gorman, 12/10)

CAPITOL HILL WATCH

Politico: Ryan, Pelosi in Staredown over Budget The House on Friday will vote on a short-term funding measure to keep the government open until Dec. 16, and additional continuing resolutions are possible. With both sides confident that time is on their side, there is no pressure for a quick agreement; for Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a good deal is more important than a quick deal. Politically, Ryan can afford to continue passing short-term funding bills to keep the government open while he tries to reach an agreement. (Bresnahan, Sherman and French, 12/9)

The Associated Press: Senate Panel Leaders Condemn Companies for Drug Price Hikes The leaders of a Senate panel are condemning four companies for aggressively increasing prices for prescription drugs. They say the companies have exploited a system lacking in competition to hike prices for critically needed medicines. An investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging focuses on Turing Pharmaceuticals, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin Inc. and Rodelis Therapeutics. The first two faced especially harsh criticism. (12/9)

CAMPAIGN 2016

The Washington Post: Ben Carson Pitches Repealing Obamacare, Raising Medicare Eligibility Age in Health Reform Plan Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson unveiled a broad outline Wednesday to reform health care, detailing a restructuring of Medicare that would raise the eligibility age to 70. Carson's proposal rests on tax-protected “health empowerment accounts” — a de facto expansion of health savings accounts, which in Carson's vision would be opened for each citizen upon birth and grow over time based on individual contributions. (DelReal, 12/9)

Reuters: Rubio Says He's Only One Running with Results Fighting Obamacare Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, seeking to win over conservative voters, told Reuters he was the only one running with a victory against President Barack Obama's signature health law. Rubio, a U.S. senator from , has touted his effort to prevent what he called a potential taxpayer bailout of insurers as his rivalry heats up with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a chief critic of the 2010 Obamacare law. (12/9)

HEALTH ISSUES AND IMPLEMENTATION

Capital Public Radio: Small Violations of Medical Privacy Can Hurt Patients and Erode Trust Under the federal law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, it's illegal for health care providers to share patients' treatment information without their permission. The Office for Civil Rights, the arm of the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for enforcing the law, receives more than 30,000 reports about privacy violations each year. The bulk of the government's enforcement — and the public's attention — has focused on a small number of splashy cases in which hackers or thieves have accessed the health data of large groups of people. But the damage done in these mass breaches has been mostly hypothetical, with much information exposed but little exploited. As Frances discovered, it's often little-noticed, smaller-scale violations of medical privacy — the ones that affect only one or two people — that inflict the most harm. (Ornstein, 12/10)

Los Angeles Times: California's 3 Largest Health Insurers among Few to Show Obamacare Profit in 2014 California's biggest health insurers are among a select few to show a profit selling Obamacare policies. In the first year of the massive coverage expansion, California's three largest health insurers bucked the national trend of heavy losses and accounted for half of the gains reported under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. (Terhune, 12/9)

USA Today: Healthcare.gov Starts to See Enrollment Boost, but Concerns Linger The administration also says it won't be doing special enrollment periods for people who are shocked into wanting to sign up after they see their penalty at tax time for not having insurance, something they offered this year. Insurers have been critical of the unpredictability caused by these special periods — which are also offered for people in a variety of situations, such as those who move out of state, marry, divorce or lose their job. (O'Donnell, 12/9)

MARKETPLACE

Bloomberg: Can Elizabeth Holmes Save Her Unicorn? Elizabeth Holmes rarely slips out of character. When she responds to questions in an interview or on a conference stage, she leans forward, leg crossed ankle over knee in a half-lotus manspread power pose. She lowers her voice an octave or two, as if she’s plumbing the depths of the human vocal cord. Although she hates it being remarked upon, her clothing, a disciplined all-black ensemble of flat shoes, slacks, turtleneck, and blazer buttoned at the waist, is impossible not to notice. She adopted this uniform, as she calls it, in 2003, when she founded Theranos, a company seeking to revolutionize the medical diagnostics industry by doing tests using only a few drops of blood. (Kolhatkar and Chen, 12/10)

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

Los Angeles Times: Do We Need Obamacare's 'Cadillac Tax'? Yes--and No. Despite the success of the Affordable Care Act's supporters in fending off a raft of challenges to the law in Congress and the courts, at least one ACA provision seems headed for the scrap heap. That's the "Cadillac tax," a stiff tax that will hit especially generous employer health plans starting in 2018. (Michael Hiltzik, 12/9)

Los Angeles Times: The Pressure to Say You're OK A colleague recently announced that he'd been diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer. Don't worry, he wrote. He promised to fight. He promised to recover. As a survivor of multiple cancers and rare diseases, I've had to write my fair share of group emails alerting friends and family to medical news. So I understand the impulse to sound upbeat. Diagnosis emails and social-media posts are now a genre with set tropes and expected turns of phrase. (Adam Baer, 12/9)

DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP's Communications Department.

Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content.

CALIFORNIA WATCH DECEMBER 11, 2015

California Healthline: Dual Opt-Out Numbers Take Slight Dip The Cal MediConnect program got a little good news in the latest enrollment numbers: The percentage of dual eligible opt-outs dropped slightly from 47% in October to 45% in November. Excluding Los Angeles County, which has the state's largest number of residents dually eligible, the percentages looked even better, with a 30% opt-out rate this month, compared to 37% a month ago. (Gorn, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: Legislature Fizzles in Special Sessions on Transportation and Healthcare Of the two special sessions called by the governor, the effort on healthcare was the most wide-ranging. Brown asked legislators to rework a soon-to-expire $1.1 billion tax on managed care insurance plans, as well as agree on a new way to pay for in-home care worker wages and restore a 10% cut in developmental disability programs made during the recession years. ... But in the case of transportation and healthcare, funding through additional revenues -- that is to say, a tax increase -- has remained a non-starter. (Myers, 12/10)

The Sacramento Bee: California Assisted Death Advocates Urge Quicker Implementation Advocates for the dying on Thursday urged policymakers to start implementing a new law, currently on hold, that will allow terminally ill Californians to end their lives. (White, 12/10)

Reuters: Study Finds Higher Rates of Advanced Thyroid Cancer in California A new University of California, Los Angeles study has found that in parts of California the rate of thyroid cancer patients with an advanced stage of the disease is well above the national average, prompting research into possible links to farming or radiation. According to the study, 35 percent of Californians with thyroid cancer were not diagnosed until the disease had already spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body, compared with 29 percent of people nationwide. (Whitcomb, 12/10)

CAPITOL HILL WATCH

Los Angeles Times: Why Go Without a Fight? Congress Heads toward the Last Budget Battle of the Year Congress is poised to pass a stopgap spending bill to avert a Friday shutdown and keep the government running five more days as a standoff intensifies over controversial add-ons included in the year-end budget deal. As Democrats resist dozens of GOP-led efforts to rollback women’s reproductive health services, halt environmental regulations to fight climate change and undo financial services reforms approved after the Great Recession, they were backed by top White House officials in private meetings this week. Democrats are instead pushing to include their own priorities, including lifting a ban on federal gun violence research. (Mascaro, 12/10)

The Hill: Dem Fault Lines Emerge on 'Cadillac Tax' Backers argue the projected $91 billion in revenue created by the tax over the next decade is essential to funding the law and keeping healthcare costs in check. “A two-year delay, I’m concerned, turns into a permanent delay,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “It was one of the key areas of cost containment, and in a state like mine where we’re still trying to get Medicaid expansion, and state legislators say the federal government’s not going to keep the existing commitments, when you take away one of the substantial pay-fors for healthcare reform, you strengthen their case.” (Sullivan, 12/10)

CAMPAIGN 2016

NBC News: Obamacare Foe Marco Rubio Insured Under Affordable Care Act Florida Sen. Marco Rubio boasts of being the only Republican presidential candidate to have dealt a blow to Obamacare — but he's also insured under the law. Rubio's campaign confirmed to NBC News that the GOP presidential candidate and his family remain insured under the law, through the D.C. exchange. He first signed up in 2013. (Jaffe, 12/10)

HEALTH LAW ISSUES AND IMPLEMENTATION

U.S. News & World Report: When a Free Check-Up Isn’t Really Free Patricia Jones thought she was getting the much-talked-about free physical under Obamacare when she went to see a doctor in May. But, she says, a few small things that happened during her checkup ended up making the visit cost more than $450. First, the doctor asked Jones, who lives in Oregon and describes herself as a full-time mom, if she had moles that were changing colors. When Jones pointed to a spot on her neck, the doctor said it was not even a mole and nothing to worry about. (Leonard, 12/10)

MARKETPLACE

Reuters: J&J, Alphabet Aim for Smarter, Smaller, Cheaper Surgical Robot Johnson & Johnson and Alphabet Inc's life sciences unit have formed an independent company to create far smaller, smarter and less costly robotic-assisted systems for surgery than those sold now by other companies, J&J said on Thursday. Creation of the new company, Verb Surgical Inc, follows an announcement in March by J&J and Google Inc of their plans to pool their technologies and expertise to create robotics for the operating room. (Pierson, 12/10)

Reuters: After the Genome, AstraZeneca Taps 'Secretome' for Novel Drugs AstraZeneca is diving into the world of proteins secreted by cells - collectively known as the secretome - in the hunt for new drugs and better "cell factories" for making biotech medicines. The so-called secretome accounts for around one third of human proteins and the idea of mapping them all follows the decoding of the human genome in 2000, since when there has been a surge in scientific buzzwords ending in "ome." (Hirschler, 12/10)

Bloomberg: How Gilead Priced its $20 Billion Blockbuster From the start, the miracle drug was expected to carry a high price tag: $36,000 to treat each patient. Over the two years leading up to the medicine’s 2013 launch, Gilead Sciences Inc. executives and advisers inched the number higher, to about $65,000, then to $81,000, then to $84,000 -- or $1,000 a pill for the 12-week treatment -- as they homed in on a price that was just below where they thought insurers would add significant restrictions for the breakthrough hepatitis C remedy. (Langreth, 12/10)

HEALTH IT

NPR: Despite Emphasis on Big Hacks, Small Breaches of Medical Privacy Do More Harm Millions of private medical records have been hacked at large insurance companies like Anthem. What appears to be causing more damage are smaller violations of medical privacy. (Kodjak, 12/10)

Kaiser Health News: Where are STDs Rampant? Google Wants to Help Researchers Find Out With sexually transmitted diseases on the rise, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago think they might have a powerful new weapon to fight their spread: Google searches. The nation’s leading search engine has quietly begun giving researchers access to its data troves to develop analytical models for tracking infectious diseases in real time or close to it. UIC is one of at least four academic institutions that have received access so far, along with the CDC. (Jaklevic, 12/10)

PUBLIC HEALTH AND EDUCATION

Kaiser Health News: Many Hospitals Neglect Practices to Combat ER Overcrowding, Study Finds Crowded emergency departments have been vexing patients and hospital staff for years as consumers have increasingly sought care there. But a new study finds that many of the busiest facilities have yet to adopt several well regarded measures to reduce the wait and minimize delays. (Andrews, 12/11)

The Associated Press: Shootings May Push States to Give FBI Mental Health Records Six states are not alerting the FBI about people who have been found to have mental health problems that would bar them from owning guns, according to a new report released Thursday by a gun-control advocacy group. Three of those states recently passed laws to turn over records of people who are involuntarily committed to mental institutions for use in the FBI's National Criminal Background Check System. (Volz, 12/11)

Reuters: U.S. Mentally Ill 16 Times More Likely to be Killed by Police: Study Americans with severe mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians, a study by an advocacy group said on Thursday. Official and unofficial accounts of the hundreds of Americans killed yearly in encounters with police show that at least a quarter of those slain are severely mentally ill, the report by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center said. (12/10)

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

Los Angeles Times: No, Marco Rubio Didn't Score a Blow Against Obamacare -- He Merely Hurt Patients Sen. Marco Rubio's presidential campaign has been crowing lately about the blow he supposedly scored against the Affordable Care Act. "Only one candidate has actually done significant damage to Obamacare," boasts his campaign website. The candidate himself claims to have "saved the American taxpayer $2.5 billion." The New York Times -- excuse me, "even" the New York Times -- credits Rubio with slipping "a little-noticed" provision into a spending bill last year to achieve this aim. These claims are a little overheated, wholly misleading and spectacularly cynical. Let's set the record straight. (Michael Hiltzik, 12/10)

DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP's Communications Department.

Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content.