California
Doctors fear California law aimed at COVID-19 misinformation could do more harm than good
California docs will quickly be topic to disciplinary motion if they offer their sufferers details about COVID-19 that they know to be false or deceptive.
On its face, the brand new state regulation feels like a transparent blow to the forces which have fueled skepticism about life-saving vaccines, inspired anxious folks to belief discredited and harmful medicine like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and diminished face masks to symbols of political partisanship. The measure was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom final week and goes into impact on Jan. 1.
However critics of the regulation, together with many mainstream docs who’ve advocated passionately for masks and vaccines, say it might find yourself curbing well-intentioned conversations between sufferers and physicians a couple of illness that’s nonetheless altering from one month to the subsequent.
“There’s clear misinformation that’s occurring that’s as black and white as you will get. However there’s a variety of grey on the market too,” stated Dr. Eric Widera, a professor of drugs at UC San Francisco who focuses on geriatrics.
With COVID-19, he stated, “the usual of care has modified quite a bit in 2½ years.” Earlier within the pandemic, he recorded tutorial movies for his kids’s faculty on correctly put on material face masks. In the present day such masks are largely dismissed as ineffective.
That’s a nonclinical instance of a reality concerning the evolution of medical analysis, Widera stated: “What was misinformation at some point is the present scientific pondering one other day.”
The brand new regulation applies solely to conversations between sufferers and their docs concerning the affected person’s care. It is not going to cowl, for instance, any fringe claims {that a} COVID-19 skeptic with a medical diploma would possibly air on social media or at a public rally. An try and restrict a doctor’s public pontifications would most likely not survive a 1st Modification problem in court docket, a legislative evaluation of the invoice discovered.
In his signing assertion, Newsom acknowledged that he was “involved concerning the chilling impact” of legislating doctor-patient conversations.
However this regulation, he wrote, “is narrowly tailor-made to use solely to these egregious cases by which a licensee is performing with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required normal of care whereas interacting immediately with a affected person below their care.”
The textual content of the measure doesn’t spell out what constitutes an egregious occasion, or what metrics shall be used to find out malicious intent.
Investigating and adjudicating an alleged violation by conventional physicians would be the duty of the Medical Board of California. The regulation additionally applies to osteopathic physicians, and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California will deal with these instances. Penalties embody probation, suspension and lack of license.
In some methods, the laws appears extra symbolic than substantive. State regulation already bars docs from mendacity to their sufferers or doling out subpar medical recommendation that fails to satisfy the essential normal for high quality care. That applies to take care of all illnesses, together with COVID-19.
Medical therapy modifications as understanding of a illness evolves, and the board’s grievance course of is designed to “accommodate the truth that drugs basically is an ever-changing area,” stated Carlos Villatoro, a spokesperson for the state medical board.
When a grievance towards a doctor is available in, the board “makes use of physicians who’re specialists of their area to assessment the person info and circumstances concerned within the scenario below investigation, and opine on the suitable normal of care that ought to have been adopted at the moment,” Villatoro stated. “No two instances are the identical, and the Board would make this willpower primarily based on the info and circumstances of the given case.”
By making the prohibition towards COVID-19 lies unambiguously clear, the brand new regulation will strengthen a medical board’s hand if a doctor who has been sanctioned tries to problem that call, stated state Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a pediatrician and co-author of the measure.
This isn’t California’s first regulation towards a selected kind of medical misconduct. Through the years, the state Enterprise and Professions Code has been up to date to explicitly bar physicians from breaking legal guidelines associated to human cloning and to the long-discredited most cancers therapies laetrile and amygdalin. The code specifies that it’s “unprofessional conduct” to distribute liquid silicone for breast implants, or to fail to offer sufferers written summaries earlier than beauty collagen injections.
The code is there to guard sufferers. Its authors wrote it with essentially the most obtrusive examples in thoughts, Pan stated, reminiscent of Dr. Simone Gold, the Beverly Hills doctor who based the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Docs. Gold has promoted debunked COVID-19 therapies such because the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and has unfold outlandish claims about vaccine security.
(Gold additionally participated within the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and pleaded responsible to unlawfully getting into the constructing. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail and had her medical license suspended after her conviction.)
“When somebody blatantly supplies misinformation, completely inaccurate info — particularly with intention — that harms sufferers,” Pan stated. “That takes away the affected person’s capability to make acceptable selections.”
However critics of the brand new regulation say they’re nervous that singling out a quickly evolving and comparatively new illness might have unintended harms.
“I’m involved this invoice is not going to have in mind how rapidly info modifications in COVID-19,” stated Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious illness specialist at UCSF.
She cited for instance the antiviral medicine Paxlovid. The Meals and Drug Administration’s tips for emergency use of the drug aren’t up to date quick sufficient to replicate the most recent analysis exhibiting that whereas it helps senior residents, it doesn’t do a lot for sufferers below 65.
Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency doctor and well being coverage skilled at George Washington College, stated it might be straightforward to think about the same regulation getting used to suppress factual medical info.
“We must be very involved concerning the chilling impact on medical apply and scientific discourse — and look out for copycat laws from different states on different points (i.e. reproductive care) that use politics in an try and censor physicians,” Wen stated in an electronic mail.
It’s not an idle fear. Because the begin of the pandemic, 14 states have launched laws to guard docs who unfold COVID-19 misinformation from skilled censure.
In 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards warned that docs who unfold misinformation about COVID-19 might place themselves susceptible to shedding their licenses. When Tennessee’s Board of Medical Examiners tried to undertake the nationwide FSMB coverage as its personal, the state legislature threatened to disband the board if it took such an motion, the legislative evaluation identified.
Misinformation round this pandemic has induced deep and irreversible hurt. Of the greater than 1 million deaths from COVID-19 within the U.S. up to now, as many as 318,000 might have been prevented with accessible vaccines, in keeping with an evaluation from the Brown College of Public Well being and others. Folks have died as a result of they made decisions primarily based on false info unfold by folks ready to know higher.
Each the regulation’s authors and its critics say their arguments are primarily based on the identical notion: Sufferers ought to be capable of belief their docs.
“Belief in a single’s doctor is among the most vital instruments now we have when speaking with sufferers concerning the significance of evidence-based interventions like COVID vaccines,” Widera stated. If sufferers are below the impression that their docs can’t converse freely, he stated, “it would solely additional worsen the continuing belief points now we have seen within the final 2½ years.”
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom may exclude Tesla and other automakers from an electric vehicle (EV) rebate program if the incoming Trump administration scraps a federal tax credit for electric car purchases.
Newsom proposed creating a new version of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, which was phased out in 2023 after funding more than 594,000 vehicles and saving more than 456 million gallons of fuel, the governor’s office said in a news release on Monday.
“Consumers continue to prove the skeptics wrong – zero-emission vehicles are here to stay,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not turning back on a clean transportation future – we’re going to make it more affordable for people to drive vehicles that don’t pollute.”
The proposed rebates would be funded with money from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is funded by polluters under the state’s cap-and-trade program, the governor’s office said. Officials did not say how much the program would cost or save consumers.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday proposed creating a new version of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program if the incoming Trump administration scraps a federal tax credit for electric car purchases. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, File / Getty Images)
They would also include changes to promote innovation and competition in the zero-emission vehicles market – changes that could prevent automakers like Tesla from qualifying for the rebates.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who relocated Tesla’s corporate headquarters from California to Texas in 2021, responded to the possibility of having Tesla EVs left out of the program.
Tesla and other automakers may not qualify for the proposed tax credits, according to the governor’s office. (Getty Images, File / Getty Images)
“Even though Tesla is the only company who manufactures their EVs in California! This is insane,” Musk wrote on X, which he also owns.
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Those buying or leasing Tesla vehicles accounted for about 42% of the state’s rebates, The Associated Press reported, citing data from the California Air Resources Board.
Newsom’s office told Fox Business Digital that the proposal is intended to foster market competition, and any potential market cap is subject to negotiation with the state Legislature.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TSLA | TESLA INC. | 338.59 | -13.97 | -3.96% |
“Under a potential market cap, and depending on what the cap is, there’s a possibility that Tesla and other automakers could be excluded,” the governor’s office said. “But that’s again subject to negotiations with the legislature.”
Newsom’s office noted that such market caps have been part of rebate programs since George W. Bush’s administration in 2005.
Newsom has pushed Californians to replace gas-powered vehicles with zero-emission vehicles. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Federal tax credits for EVs are currently worth up to $7,500 for new zero-emission vehicles. President-elect Trump has previously vowed to end the credit.
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California has surpassed 2 million zero-emission vehicles sold, according to the governor’s office. The state, however, could face a $2 billion budget deficit next year, Reuters reported, citing a non-partisan legislative estimate released last week.
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Along with most other Democratic politicians in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom still doesn’t seem to understand what happened in the 2024 election.
For years, Newsom, along with California cronies like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, bragged about their state being a “model for the nation.”
In one sense–not the one they intended, of course–that’s true. California became a model of what not to do.
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The terrible combination of elitism and extremism that has defined Democratic policymaking in my home state for at least the last decade has delivered failure on every front.
Despite having the highest taxes in the nation, despite the state’s budget nearly doubling in the last ten years (even as our population has been falling, in the exodus from blue state misrule), California has the highest rate of poverty in America. We have the highest housing costs, the lowest homeownership, highest gas and utility bills, and the worst business climate–ten years in a row.
This record of failure is exactly why Democrats lost so badly on November 5th. Voters had a clear choice: between more of the same Democrat policies that raised the cost of living and lowered their quality of life, or a return to the peace and prosperity of the Trump years.
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In many ways, the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris represented a battle between the ‘blue state model’ championed by Gavin Newsom in California, and the ‘red state model’ that has driven people and businesses out of California and into the arms of more welcoming states like Texas, Tennessee and Florida.
Of course, the red state model won and the blue state model was roundly rejected.
You would think that would make blue state leaders like Newsom pause and reflect. But the exact opposite has happened. Gavin Newsom immediately called a “special session” of the California legislature to “Trump-proof” his state.
What California really needs is “Newsom-proofing.”
Instead, California Democrats are doubling down on the exact same agenda that was defeated across the country – including in California, which saw the biggest shift from Democrats to the GOP in decades.
Here are the five things California Democrats still don’t get:
1. People want results, not lectures
Democrats and their media sycophants can do all the self-righteous, sanctimonious bloviating they like about “our democracy” and “equity”, but in the end people want the basics of the American Dream: a good job that pays enough to raise your family in a home of your own in a safe neighborhood with a good school so your kids can have a better life than you. No amount of moral superiority from the people in charge will make up for that if they fail to provide it.
2. Enough with the ‘climate’ extremism
“Climate” has become a religion for Democrats, and you see that especially clearly in California. But when you look at the main reason life is so unaffordable for working people, whether that’s gas prices, utility bills or housing costs, extreme climate policies are to blame. Working-class Americans can’t afford these ‘luxury beliefs.’
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3. Who cares about Hollywood?
This election destroyed forever the myth that fancy celebrities can sway votes. Oprah, Beyonce, George Clooney, Taylor Swift…nobody cares! The new cultural powerhouses are the podcast hosts, comedians…the raw power of UFC is where it’s at, not the decadent Hollywood elite who won’t even turn up to support “their” candidate without a multimillion dollar paycheck.
Producer and actress Oprah Winfrey holds up Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ hand as she arrives onstage during a campaign rally on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024. (Getty Images)
4. ‘Little tech’ beats Big Tech
Democrats may console themselves with the knowledge that California’s Big Tech monopolies are on their side. But in this election we saw the rise of what famed Silicon Valley investor Marc Andressen calls “little tech”, the upstarts and rebels who reject leftist groupthink. They got engaged in this election in a way we’ve never seen before. It’s a massive shift and will be a huge force for the future.
5. Working class beats the elite
Back in 2016, after the Brexit vote, and then Donald Trump’s victory here, shocked the world, I predicted that the Republican Party had the opportunity to become a “multiracial working class coalition.” Trump’s 2024 victory has delivered that — a revolutionary shift in our political landscape. The other part of my prediction? Democrats will be left as the party of the “rich, white and woke.”
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Unless Democrats come to terms with these realities and change course, they can expect to lose elections for years to come. The reaction in California – epicenter of today’s Democrat elite — shows that there is zero sign of this happening.
They just don’t get it.
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- Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to revive California’s EV rebate if Trump ends the federal tax credit.
- But Tesla, the largest maker of EVs, would be excluded under the proposal.
- Elon Musk criticized Tesla’s potential exclusion from the rebate.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is preparing to step in if President-elect Donald Trump fulfills his promise to axe the federal electric-vehicle tax credit — but one notable EV maker could be left out.
Newsom said Monday if the $7,500 federal tax credit is eliminated he would restart the state’s zero-emission vehicle rebate program, which was phased out in 2023.
“We will intervene if the Trump Administration eliminates the federal tax credit, doubling down on our commitment to clean air and green jobs in California,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not turning back on a clean transportation future — we’re going to make it more affordable for people to drive vehicles that don’t pollute.”
The rebates for EV buyers would come from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is funded by polluters of greenhouse gases under a cap-and-trade program, according to the governor’s office.
But Tesla’s vehicles could be excluded under the proposal’s market-share limitations, Bloomberg News first reported.
The governor’s office confirmed to Business Insider that the rebate program could include a market-share cap which could in turn exclude Tesla or other EV makers. The office did not share details about what market-share limit could be proposed and also noted the proposal would be subject to negotiations in the state legislature.
A market-share cap would exclude companies whose sales account for a certain amount of total electric vehicle sales. For instance, Tesla accounted for nearly 55% off all new electric vehicles registered in California in the first three quarters of 2024, according to a report from the California New Car Dealers Association. By comparison, the companies with the next highest EV market share in California were Hyundai and BMW with 5.6% and 5% respectively.
Tesla sales in California, the US’s largest EV market, have recently declined even as overall EV sales in the state have grown. Though the company still accounted for a majority of EV sales in California this year as of September, its market share fell year-over-year from 64% to 55%.
The governor’s office said the market-share cap would be aimed at promoting competition and innovation in the industry.
Elon Musk, who has expressed support for ending the federal tax credit, said in an X post it was “insane” for the California proposal exclude Tesla.
The federal electric vehicle tax credit, which was passed as part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, provides a $7,500 tax credit to some EV buyers.
Musk, who is working closely with the incoming Trump administration, has expressed support for ending the tax credit. He’s set to co-lead an advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is aimed at slashing federal spending.
The Tesla CEO said on an earnings call in July that ending the federal tax credit might actually benefit the company.
“I think it would be devastating for our competitors and for Tesla slightly,” Musk said. “But long-term probably actually helps Tesla, would be my guess.”
BI’s Graham Rapier previously reported that ending the tax credit could help Tesla maintain its strong standing in the EV market by slowing its competitors growth.
Prior to the EV rebate proposal, Newsom has already positioned himself as a foil to the incoming Trump administration. Following Trump’s election win the governor called on California lawmakers to convene for a special session to discuss protecting the state from Trump’s second term.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement at the time.
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