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State Sen. Toni Atkins stood on a stage outside the Capitol last month and made the case for a Democratic-backed bid to transform California’s health care system into something that’s never been done in the U.S. “People shouldn’t have to experience anxiety over whether they’ll be covered based on who’s in the White House,” Atkins, D-San Diego, told a crowd of nurses and health care advocates who were cheering her on. “It’s time to cover everybody once and for all.” (Hart, 6/7)

In Ohio, nearly 18 percent of residents age 60 and older struggle with food security. That makes the state one of the 10 worst in the country when it comes to the senior-hunger challenge, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Household Food Security Measure. The Center for Community Solutions, an Ohio think tank, in a recent report attributes the level of senior hunger in the state to low utilization of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). (Christ, 6/6)

When Nate Kube lost a long-term convention center job, he struggled to find work — and his place. Kube, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, got a new start through a program called Project �Թϲ�����. Last year, the 26-year-old front desk agent became associate of the year here among the 1,500 employees of Kalahari Resorts and Conventions. (Stein, 6/6)

Right now, just about 45 percent of people who apply for Social Security disability benefits are accepted, and getting a hearing takes an average of nearly 600 days. The Kansas City office’s average hearing time is closer to 500 days, but its approval rate is slight lower at 40 percent. The backlog started snowballing about 10 years ago, around the time Jason Fitchner became acting deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. He says that during the Great Recession, a lot of people who had disabilities applied but weren’t necessarily unable to work.  (Smith, 6/7)

A week after officials disclosed a 57% rise in Los Angeles’ veteran homelessness, advocates say the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is delaying housing development on its West Los Angeles campus. A report to be released Tuesday from Vets Advocacy, a non-profit group created to oversee the development, accuses the federal agency of stalling development of a model community for 1,200 homeless veterans on its long-neglected 388-acre campus. (Holland, 6/6)

A Stage 4 cancer patient angry that Bay Area doctors allegedly treated him like a “laboratory monkey” is suspected of setting out to kill three of them, armed with two handguns and Google maps of directions to their homes, according to authorities. Yue Chen, 58, also planned to kill himself after he carried out what he considered a revenge mission, but he failed to find any of the doctors, got lost and may have been on his way back to his Visalia home when he was arrested May 31 on Highway 101 in San Jose. (Gomez, 6/6)

Jefferson Health System and Main Line Health have teamed up to buy a majority stake in Physicians Care Surgical Hospital in Royersford, the two health systems said this week. The price was not disclosed. Other partners in the specialty hospital are the Rothman Institute, which announced in 2012 that it was buying a 35 percent interest in Physicians Care, and NueHealth, which manages the facility. Main Line and Jefferson are co-owners of the Delaware Valley Accountable Care Organization, which is designed to allow the providers to benefit financially if they figure out ways to provider lower cost and higher-quality care. Owning surgical hospitals makes it easier for the health systems to move procedures to settings that have lower costs than hospitals. (Brubaker, 6/6)

After working 32 years as a nurse, Diane McCarthy knows that every mom who has a sick newborn in the neonatal intensive care unit has a labor horror story that they just have to share with someone. Now that she’s a retired volunteer at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, McCarthy can finally let those mothers tell their stories, no matter how long it might take. And the 60-year-old Galena woman can do it while enjoying her favorite activities. (Pyle, 6/7)

A Pleasanton man was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay just under half a million dollars in restitution after he used a hospice company to commit tax fraud. (Ioannou, 6/6)

A married man accused of not telling his longtime girlfriend that he was HIV-positive was charged with murder after the woman died of AIDS. A judge [in Toledo, Ohio] on Tuesday set bond at $1.5 million for Ronald Murdock, who was indicted last week in the February death of 51-year-old Kimberly Klempner. (6/6)

A Florida appeals court on Monday ordered that a South Florida doctor stop performing plastic surgery after one of his patients died last week during a liposuction and fat transfer procedure at an office clinic in Doral. Osakatukei “Osak” Omulepu, 44, is barred from performing plastic surgery and must have a board-certified physician present for any other medical procedures, until Florida’s First District Court of Appeal rules on the state’s efforts to stop the doctor from practicing. (Chang, 6/6)

A Carrollwood-area apartment complex is the third area in northern Hillsborough County to be warned about rabies this year. The state Department of Health issued the alert for Tampa's 33624 area code after an orange domestic short-hair tabby cat inside the Pinnacle Heights apartment complex tested positive for rabies, the alert said. (6/6)