California health clinics sue to block union ballot measure

from Kristen HuangCalMatters

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California billionaires aren’t the only ones fighting back the state’s largest health care worker union this election season. Now the clinics are too.

The California Primary Care Association, which represents more than 2,300 Open Door community health clinics and community health centers filed suit on Thursday to prevent the Service Employees International Union – United Health Workers of the West from putting an initiative on the November ballot that would dictate how clinics spend money.

The clinic measure is less well-known than the billionaire-backed fight against the wealth tax, but it recently came closer to going before voters.

The clinic’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the union’s ballot measure would interfere with federal laws and regulations that place strict spending requirements on nonprofit health clinics that serve low-income patients.

Joey Cachuela, general counsel for the clinical association, said in a statement that the initiative jeopardizes patient care. “We are filing this election challenge and we need the courts to act to prevent this drastic measure from ever reaching the ballot. Patients’ lives are at risk,” Cachuela said.

A spokesman for the health workers’ union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, union members submitted more than 1 million signatures to qualify “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency ActThe union collected nearly double the number of signatures needed to put the proposal before voters.

Under California election rules, propositions with enough signatures advance to the ballot after the Secretary of State’s office verifies their validity.

The union’s proposal would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90 percent of revenue on services that fulfill the stated mission of “providing primary and preventive care to low-income and underserved populations.” It would also penalize clinics that don’t adhere to that spending formula and put the money into a state account that can later be used for worker training and staffing programs.

“The intent of this initiative is to create a reasonable minimum standard for mission focus

costs … to ensure that clinical patient service delivery and workforce stability are prioritized over management and overhead costs,” the initiative states.

Union leaders and members say clinics spend too much money on executive salaries and administrative costs and too little on patients. They also claim that some clinics spend only half of their revenue on direct patient care, a claim the clinics call misleading.

“We have one message for our clinics: Put patients first. It’s time to end wasteful spending. It’s time to make sure clinics are putting their money into patient care, not executive pay,” said Briza Barrera, a medical assistant at Santa Rosa Community Health during a rally in April to celebrate the signing.

The clinic association, however, argued that the initiative would illegally force hundreds of community health centers to close, taking nearly $2 billion from health systems.

Tori Starr, CEO of Open Door Community Health Centers, which operates clinics in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, said the measure would be “devastating” for the organization’s rural patients and lead to layoffs, reduced services and closings.

A an almost identical version of the ballot initiative failed to pass the state legislature earlier this year.

The initiative is one of three measures the union has submitted for a vote. Another aims to cap pay for health care executives at $450,000, and SEIU-UHW also supports a “billionaire tax” that has drawn the ire of both Democrats and Republicans.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a cost they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.