ACTION NEEDED
Write to the Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) board and/or testify at its upcoming meeting to oppose the establishment of a hospital-specific spending target at this time. Hospital input is critical to ensuring the board understands that the current proposal is premature, lacks adequate analysis, and would harm patients’ access to care.
TIMING
Submit comment letters by Jan. 24 and testify during public comments at the Jan. 28 meeting. (Both in-person and virtual comments will be accepted.) Meeting details can be found on the OHCA website; letters should be submitted to ohca@hcai.ca.gov, attn: Megan Brubaker.
RESOURCES
- Template letter (download)
- Talking points
BACKGROUND
At its December meeting, the OHCA board encouraged staff to quickly move forward a proposal to define health care sectors, with the goal of defining a hospital sector as early as the Jan. 28 board meeting. This would pave the way for establishing one or more sector targets — potentially lower than the statewide spending target — for some or all hospitals as soon as 2026. However, OHCA has yet to establish a process to measure health care spending, report on statewide health care spending, or analyze where spending is occurring. In addition, the board has provided neither consistency nor clarity on how it will define and identify “high cost” hospitals, nor has it provided adequate analysis.
Notably, OHCA’s mandate is twofold: to rein in cost growth, but to do so without sacrificing quality of or access to health care.
For more information, visit CHA’s dedicated OHCA web page.