The problem of affordability has reignited a long-simmering battle between California’s medical trade and certainly one of its largest well being employee unions.
SEIU-United Healthcare Employees West, with roughly 120,000 members, has put ahead two poll initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require neighborhood clinics to spend the huge bulk of their revenues on affected person care.
The California Hospital Affiliation has responded with its personal poll proposal that will make it more durable for unions to spend cash on future political initiatives by requiring a union’s rank-and-file membership to approve any spending of at the very least $1 million on statewide measures or $100,000 on native ones.
The competing measures, which have drawn sufficient verified signatures to qualify for the November poll, come at a time when the rising price of healthcare is rising as a high voter concern.
The Service Staff Worldwide Union affiliate has seized upon affordability angst to resurrect failed proposals to cap healthcare govt compensation.
Mikey Vaughn, an authorized nursing assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Middle, mentioned that the Los Angeles hospital, regardless of its popularity because the go-to place for the wealthy and well-known, usually lacks provides and staffing that he and his colleagues must do their jobs.
However that’s not how hospital officers see it. Cedars-Sinai spokesperson Duke Helfand mentioned if the measure handed, the hospital can be unable to recruit and retain physicians, nurses, and specialists, dramatically impairing its means to offer healthcare.
The union needs to cap compensation at $450,000 a yr for senior hospital and medical group executives, in addition to different administrative and managerial employees. SEIU-UHW doesn’t have an estimate of the quantity the initiative would claw again from pay packages that exceed the restrict. And the initiative doesn’t stipulate how {dollars} diverted from payroll have to be spent.
The union has dubbed the proposal the “Health Care Executive Compensation Act of 2026.” A coalition of medical trade heavyweights opposing it — hospitals, physicians, and clinics, amongst others — has rebranded it the “Health Care Endangerment Act.”
Carmela Coyle, CEO of the hospital affiliation, referred to as the measure a cynical political ploy.
And Glenn Melnick, a healthcare economist on the College of Southern California, mentioned that even when the initiative have been totally applied, he doubts it will scale back sufferers’ healthcare prices.
The second SEIU-UHW poll initiative, on neighborhood clinics, is already in court docket. The California Main Care Affiliation, which represents clinics, filed a federal lawsuit in April in search of to invalidate it earlier than it reaches the November poll.
One in every of California’s largest healthcare unions is sponsoring two initiatives that will regulate neighborhood clinics and cap govt and managerial pay at hospitals and doctor teams. In the latest eruption of a long-standing feud, the measures have drawn fierce opposition from a large swath of the medical trade.
