What’s happening: Ahead of next week’s Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) board meeting, CHA submitted comments urging the board to reevaluate both its statewide spending cap (set at 3.5% for 2026) and its “high-cost” hospital spending cap (set at 1.8% for 2026).
What else to know: The board’s agenda includes updates on measuring hospital spending and a presentation of OHCA’s first report on annual spending growth covering 2022 and 2023.
CHA’s letter calls the board’s attention to recent proposals at the state and federal levels that would have dire consequences on patient care, urging the board to explicitly state that providers will not be punished if they exceed spending growth caps as a result of their efforts to backfill these potential losses in public funding. CHA also urges OHCA to account for factors like inflation and state mandates in its spending targets. CHA asks OHCA to provide a more balanced perspective on the intersection of health care quality and cost. Finally, CHA’s letter highlights recent legislator oversight of OHCA’s actions, including pointed questions raised at a recent Senate budget subcommittee hearing.
CHA will publicly comment at the OHCA board’s June 9 meeting, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. in Sacramento, and encourages members to do the same. Meeting details (including a virtual attendance option) and materials can be found on the OHCA web page.
