Single-payer health care hits a roadblock: California bill doesn’t have the votes
SOPHIA BOLLAG, SacBee: “Efforts to create a government-run health care system for all Californians stalled Monday when the lawmaker pushing the legislation announced he didn’t have the votes in time for a key deadline.
Assembly Bill 1400 aimed to create a so-called single-payer health care system in California that would essentially replace private insurance with a state-run health system. It faced intense opposition from a coalition of powerful health care organizations, including the California Medical Association representing doctors and the California Association of Health Plans representing insurance companies.
The bill threatened the existence of private insurance companies and would have overhauled the health care system, prompting fierce push-back from many parts of the industry.
The Chronicle, KURTIS ALEXANDER: Snow levels in California have fallen from their December glory after an extraordinarily dry January, stoking fears that the drought will not only continue but worsen in a third difficult year.
State officials, who will conduct the second snow survey of the season Tuesday, will find snowpack in California’s mountains measuring just shy of average for this time
of year. While average is better than the modest accumulation seen the past two winters, it’s a disappointing drop from the 160% of average recorded a month ago.
What happens over the next two months will determine whether the state faces another year of crippling water shortages and whether the situation becomes even more severe than it’s been. Most of California’s precipitation occurs between November and March, and the snow that falls during this period makes or breaks water levels in the reservoirs that provide water to millions of people. Most forecasts now lean toward a dry end to this wet season."
Firefighting captain dies after being shot while battling fire in California
ERIN TRACY, SacBee: “The Stockton Fire Department captain who was fatally shot while at the scene of a garbage bin fire early Monday morning has been identified as a Modesto resident.
Capt. Max Fortuna, a 21-year veteran of the Stockton Fire Department, was shot just after 5 a.m. while at the scene of the fire at 142 Aurora St., north of Highway 4 in Stockton. Firefighters had been called to the fire around 4:45 a.m.
“As firefighters were extinguishing that fire, gunshots were heard and the fire captain of Engine 2 had been struck,” Stockton Fire Chief Rick Edwards said during a press conference Monday. “Firefighters quickly transitioned to provide EMS care for their fallen brother and transported him to the local hospital. I am devastated to report that fire Capt. Max Fortuna has succumbed to his injuries.”
California considers banning cigarette filters. Here’s what that could mean for smokers
ANDREW SHEELER, SacBee: “California lawmakers are weighing a bill that would ban sales of cigarette filters and other single-use tobacco and cannabis products — such as single-use vape pods or cigarillo tips.
Supporters of the bill point to the damage that such products do to both human health and to the environment, with cigarette butts accounting for nearly a third of the trash picked up by volunteers during the annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Here’s what that law could mean for California smokers.
California is home to an estimated 2.8 million adult smokers, according to a 2019 report from the California Department of Public Health. That number has declined dramatically, more than 57%, since 1988.
One Million Deaths: The Hole the Pandemic Made in U.S. Society
JON KAMP, JENNIFER LEVITZ, BRIANNA ABBOT and PAUL OVERBERG, Wall Street Journal: “Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s death toll is closing in on one million.
Federal authorities estimate that 987,456 more people have died since early 2020 than would have otherwise been expected, based on long-term trends. People killed by coronavirus infections account for the overwhelming majority of cases. Thousands more died from derivative causes, like disruptions in their healthcare and a spike in overdoses.
Covid-19 has left the same proportion of the population dead—about 0.3%—as did World War II, and in less time.
‘Epidemic among the unvaccinated’ in a California COVID ICU
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "Ten men and women lie sedated in 10 dim, glass-enclosed rooms, most unable to breathe without help from a machine.
On the third floor of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, these patients are among more than 2,500 people gravely ill with COVID-19 in California’s intensive-care beds. It’s Thursday morning, and 46 patients are fighting the coronavirus, some battling hard to stay off the third floor.
In the era of vaccinations and antiviral treatments — and even the coronavirus’ famously less severe variant, omicron — people aren’t supposed to get so sick from COVID."
End of an era for California’s storied, grim Death Row?
The Chronicle, KEVIN FAGAN: "The first execution at San Quentin State Prison happened in 1893, a hanging, and if you walk up to parts of the ancient lockup, to this day, it looks the same — blocky stone facade, heavy iron bars, castle-like turrets. It’s one of the oldest prisons in the nation, and for as long as most people alive can remember, it’s been the only place California executes people.
Word that the state intends to shut down Death Row has hit like a hammer that’s been waiting to fall for decades. From that very first hanging of double-murderer Jose Gabriel to the last-minute aborted lethal injection of rapist-killer Michael Morales in 2006, there has been no placid consensus about whether the state should be conducting capital punishment.
Erasing the flash point of that debate is not about to end it."
‘We did not have the votes’: Legislator kills bill for single-payer health care in California
The Chronicle, DUSTIN GARDINER: "Progressives’ goal to make California the first state to create a single-payer health care system was dashed on Monday after a Bay
Area legislator decided not to bring the bill up for a floor vote.
Assembly Member Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, said he shelved AB1400, his bill to create a state-run system, because it did not have the support of enough legislators — a defeat that comes as many moderate Democrats raised concerns about an estimate that universal health care could cost up to $391 billion per year.
Legislators faced a deadline Monday to advance the bill out of the Assembly. Now the measure is dead."
Alameda’s waterfront is being transformed. The rest of the Bay Area should take notes
The Chronicle, JOHN KING: "The perspective on San Francisco from Alameda Point is unlike any other that you will find along the bay.
Not too far in the distance is the tall skyline, with Yerba Buena Island surprisingly large and the Bay Bridge unexpectedly grand. In the foreground, a wide cove is lined by still-active Naval reserve ships to the south and, to the west and north, low buildings dotting former mudflats filled to create military land before World War II.
These juxtapositions of rough and refined, urban and nature, hint at why developers for 20 years have sought to remake the western two-thirds of the former Alameda Naval Air Station. After numerous false starts, the first pocket of new construction is wrapping up — and it shows how our bay shoreline can accommodate change while serving people who don’t necessarily live or work there."
Is the Bay Area still the best place to start a tech company? Why one startup’s COO says maybe not
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTO: "When Fast co-founder and COO Allison Barr Allen walked into a conference room in the San Francisco company’s loft-like headquarters South of Market in December, life seemed to be returning to normal. She spoke and laughed unmasked, as did others in the room. The word omicron was barely mentioned during the course of an hour. Outside the conference room’s glass windows, a handful of employees roved about the main floor of the office, trickling back as booster shot requirements were still being rolled out for in-person work.
Things had seemingly come full circle from the summer, when the online one-click checkout startup first began requiring vaccines to return and the masks were once again just coming off.
That cycle of coronavirus responses has made many of the changes brought on by the pandemic permanent."
‘We will not eat’: Teachers declare hunger strike over Oakland schools closure plan
The Chronicle, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "Anger and tensions flared during a special meeting of the Oakland school board Monday in which district officials presented a plan to close and merge more than a dozen schools, prompting some teachers to declare a hunger strike.
More than 1,800 people tuned in to hear Oakland Unified School District officials discuss plans to close at least eight schools and merge at least five other schools by the end of 2023 — actions officials said were needed to respond to the district’s mounting budget shortfalls from declining enrollment.
“I want to acknowledge the emotional toll and stress on our students,” said OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel. “This is not easy for me to present this information, especially knowing that African American students and families will be the most affected by these recommendations.”"