The trade off between safer eggs and the risk of a deadly salmonella outbreak is just pennies a dozen, according to a in-depth look at the industry by P.J. Huffstutter in the Los Angeles Times. Slightly stricter guidelines in California have helped egg producers avoid bacterial contamination in recent years, but in an industry where the bottom line reigns supreme, tighter rules have caught on in only nine of the 50 states.

Talk about passing the buck. California lawmakers approved a bill that would allow the release of prison inmates deemed permanently medically incapacitated, reports the Los Angeles Times. No, the state is not going soft on crime, nor is this about compassion or rehabilitation. It’s about money.

Health care workers at clinics serving California's poor are now officially helping float the state's precarious finances as a refusal to sign a budget approaches the two-month mark. About $300 million owed to a variety of clinics providing health care services to recipients of California's version of the federal Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, are receiving IOUs in lieu of payments.

My blogging tends to focus on the disconnect between the Illinois government and the Obama administration. Much of what happens in Illinois -- problems balancing the state budget, issues with getting Illinois' share of federal stimulus money out the door -- happens in other states. However, it's important to acknowledge that in many areas other states have a productive relationship with the Obama administration. One of these states is Illinois' northern neighbor Wisconsin, which is poised to work with Washington, D.C. in implementing the landmark Affordable Care Act.

A court injunction barring federal funds from being used on stem cell research could catapult California back into the leading edge of research. That’s because state voters established their own stem cell research fund in 2004 with the passage of proposition 71. About 35 percent of the $200 million in federal funds set aside for stem cell research grants this year haven’t yet been awarded and are now in legal limbo

A health insurance marketplace for uninsured Californians, a key concept in the federal health reform law, moved a few steps closer to reality Tuesday when the California senate narrowly approved bills aimed at setting up a so-called health insurance exchange, the Associated Press reports. The bills were passed over Republican objections that a state exchange could create an unaccountable bureaucracy and that the job should be left for the federal government. Senate Majority Leader Darrell Steinberg responded that if the state refused to create an exchange, California would be ineligible for billions in federal funding earmarked for such programs.

A simple solution to a lethal problem could come with the stroke of a pen -- and save lives.  It remains out of reach because the Food and Drug Administration's unwieldy review process.  Gardiner Harris of the New York Times investigates something  basic and alarming -- the misconnection of plastic tubes that are used to deliver medicine, anaesthetic, and other vital substances to patients in America's hospitals.  The tubes are often very similar, and can easily be fitted into many different devices.  The result can be painful and sudden death when medical workers make errors and connect the wrong tubes -- liquid food can be inserted into a vein, and air bubbles can end up in people's blood streams.

They are still pointing fingers in Sacramento two months after a story, tailor-made for cable TV foamers, emerged that welfare beneficiaries could cash out their aid grants at California gambling parlors. According to a San Francisco Chronicle story by Marisa Lagos, a state commission appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger knew all about the issue four years ago, issued a ruling last year to end the practice, and then proceeded to not enforce it.

California health clinics serving the poor may soon go broke. That's the concern raised by Torey Van Oot's piece in the Sacramento Bee as the state's annual budget impasse drags into its 51st day. That's because the $2 billion contingency fund established to cover payments while legislators jawbone, speechify, and avoid a budget agreement, was expected to be exhausted yesterday.

Illinois so far has sidestepped major problems with the national outbreak of salmonella-tainted eggs that were made in Iowa.  The Washington Post’s David Brown reports that salmonella-tainted eggs produced by Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa have sickened 1,200 people nationwide. The company has initiated a recall of 380 million eggs, but the worst could be still to come: