Yesterday, CHA took a critical step to push back on actions taken by the Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) that are threatening access to care, putting health care workers’ jobs in jeopardy, impeding efforts to improve health equity, and risking the quality of care Californians receive.
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court alleges that OHCA’s board, a group of eight unelected bureaucrats, has violated both the spirit and letter of the law that created the organization — a law that established a concrete framework and guidance for a thoughtful, data-driven approach to making health care more affordable without sacrificing access to care, quality of care, health care jobs, and more.
If the lawsuit is successful, OHCA would be prevented from implementing five actions, effectively requiring the board to revisit key decisions around statewide health care spending targets, the adoption of hospital sectors, and the setting of even lower spending targets for a select group of hospitals.
Regrettably, OHCA has routinely chosen to ignore key data, dismiss valid and thoughtful perspectives, and suggest that complex problems that arise from decisions they make could be figured out after the dust settles. The result: a handful of people with limited, if any, experience in health care operations have recklessly cut billions from the state’s health care system at a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
For example, factors OHCA has ignored include:
- The underlying costs of care (labor expenses, advancements in clinical care, pharmaceutical prices, etc.)
- A rapidly aging population that will require more intensive care
- National and statewide inflationary pressures
- State and federal policy changes, such as passage earlier this year of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will strip tens of billions of dollars from California’s health care system over the next decade
- And more
Already, health insurers — whose monthly premium payments for Californians continue to skyrocket — are using OHCA’s spending targets as leverage so they can compensate health providers as little as possible for the services they provide. All of this while hospitals are forced to shutter services like maternity care, trim jobs, or close outright.
The health care Californians rely on is on the edge of a cliff, and this lawsuit is asking the courts to step in to pull it back — before it’s too late.
