San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, two organizations with roughly 60,000 SEIU members combined, would not fall prey to the ballot measures if passed, according to the report. Overall, roughly 25 percent of California’s private hospitals and all of the public hospitals would also be exempt.
SEIU officials said Dignity and Kaiser would be excluded due to their unique situations. They argued Dignity is already the largest provider of charity care to low-income and poor California residents, while Kaiser runs its own health insurance company and does not have to report the same financial data as other hospitals.
The California Hospital Association, advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and other healthcare advocates said the exemptions would only result in an unfair advantage for those institutions. “It’s like a marijuana regulation initiative that leaves out Humboldt County,” said Jaime Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, in the report. “There’s no good reason [to exclude] two of the largest providers in the state.”
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