What has $5.5 billion and provides millions of dollars per year to the left in California and won’t stop until California has universal, government-run and fully unionized healthcare?
The answer: three foundations created by the conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status of Health Net Inc. and Blue Cross in the past 15 years,The California Endowment, California Wellness Foundation and California HealthCare Foundation.
These three entities, hijacked by the liberal activists on their boards, fund political activity, liberal consumer rights groups such as the Consumers Union (the publisher of Consumer Reports), the ACLU, the California Teachers Association, Planned Parenthood, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (the latter for something called, the “Transgender Healthcare Action Project”), and on and on.
Political Tactics
One example of the mega-foundations’ increasingly sophisticated political tactics should give pause to every Californian.
The California Wellness Foundation in 2003 awarded a $12,500 grant to Assembly candidate Karen Bass, a Los Angeles community and healthcare activist.
Coincidentally, the cash came six weeks after Bass formally started her Democrat primary campaign (and another grant came later). Defending the foundation’s action, CEO Gary L. Yates contends that Bass was selected to get the money before the official start of her candidacy.
Of course, campaigns are often open secrets for months before they become official and in Bass’ case, she was an L.A. City Council candidate before she ran for the Assembly. Add to that the fact that several staffers involved in the grant process at the California Wellness Foundation also contributed to Bass’ campaign personally.
Less than two months after the first cash grant, Bass loaned her campaign $34,000, boosting her effort to eclipse the far better-known former L.A. City councilman Nate Holden and two others to win the primary and go on to represent the 47th Assembly District.
The very talented and very liberal Assemblywoman Bass now is on the fast track to leadership in the Assembly’s powerful Democrat caucus and holds universal healthcare as one of her main interests.
Six-figure Donations
Additional evidence of the California Wellness Foundation’s left-wing advocacy can be seen in a very small sampling of some of its six-figure donations for 2003:
$140,000 to Western Center on Law and Poverty, a big supporter of socialized medicine “to sustain state and local advocacy efforts to improve low-income Californians’ access to health care.”
$130,000 to the California League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, a liberal environmentalist group.
$100,000 to California Budget Project, which the San Francisco Chronicle recently called a “liberal Sacramento policy group.”
$100,000 to California Council of Churches, a reflexively leftist organization.
$100,000 to Health Access Foundation. It funds Health Access California, led by Anthony Wright, who was very active in 2005’s Propositions 78 and 79 campaigns and has been quoted many times attacking Republicans.
The current target of the billion-dollar healthcare foundation cabal appears to be California’s large and effective nonprofit hospital system. The nonprofit hospitals are accused of making too much money, paying their managers too much and not providing enough free healthcare to the poor.
Potent Mix
Add to these complaints the Service Employees International Union’s gripe that the nonprofit hospitals aren’t unionized enough, and you have a potent mix of charges sure to move California’s left-tilting legislature to immediate action.
Hospital systems such as Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, and Catholic Healthcare West counter the critics with hard facts:
When the $40 billion in required seismic retrofit costs plus capital construction are considered, there is little to no profit remaining. They pay their managers what the market dictates. And they do help the poor by, among many ways, subsidizing money-losing hospitals in underprivileged areas,something for-profit hospital chains are loathe to do.
What will happen if the attack on California’s nonprofit hospital system succeeds? The nonprofits will likely be forced to convert to for-profit businesses so they can survive by raising the capital needed to compete. This will leave ordinary, working class Californians with little choice in healthcare. There will then be two systems: the private, for-profit system for the rich and the government-run and fully unionized system for everyone else.
The three healthcare foundation CEOs each make in excess of $600,000 per year so we can guess which hospital system they will use.
Philosophical Balance
All of this leads us to the fundamental truth that liberals are willing to invest tremendous energy to create for themselves engines of change to forcibly remake America in their image. Ask yourself, where are the three similar foundations that conservatives have taken over with a net worth of $5.5 billion?
The solution? Get some philosophical balance on the boards of these three foundations to hold them accountable. Unwatched, they will become even more aggressive in funding candidates and causes that are no doubt contrary to their ostensible mission.
DeVore is the Republican Assemblyman from Irvine.
