SEASIDE – The first meeting of the Office of Health Care Affordability outside Sacramento will be held in Seaside and will focus, among other things, on the rising costs of health care at three hospitals that serve the Monterey and Salinas areas.

The OHCA monthly meeting will be held on Wednesday at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Monterey Bay Seaside, 1441 Canyon Del Rey Blvd., in the Laguna Grande Ballrooms A and B from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Item five on the OHCA meeting agenda includes presentations on the disparities in health insurance premiums, spending and prices in California, the perspectives of public purchasers, a case study on Monterey County hospitals and the state’s ability to address high costs, and the Office of Health Care Affordability’s statutory authority to address high costs.

Health advocates, community groups and unions are calling for a low health spending target for the hospitals that serve communities in the Monterey and Salinas areas, according to Health Access and the UC Berkeley Labor Center. This is the first time since the OHCA board was formed in 2022 that it will meet outside of Sacramento to better understand the challenges facing a specific community.

Health Access is a nonprofit organization that directly engages in lobbying and advocacy. Health Access California is committed to the goal of high-quality, affordable, and equitable health care for all Californians.

A written comment letter from the UC Berkeley Labor Center submitted to OHCA provides a brief summary of the research and data underlying the affordability crisis in Monterey County.

Founded in 1964, the UC Berkeley Labor Center is a public service and outreach program of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

The Labor Center’s Health Research Program aims to support policymaking related to access to health insurance and health care affordability for workers and their families. It says its review of available data underscores the severe health care affordability challenges associated with hospital prices in the Monterey and Salinas region, as summarized in its September 2023 blog post, “Why are health care prices so high for workers in Monterey County?”

In his letter to the OHCA, submitted ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, he said, among other things, that Monterey County was an appropriate place for the OHCA to discuss health care affordability “given the many employees who have shared with the Board their compelling and concerning stories of the health care affordability challenges they face at the three hospitals in Monterey and Salinas: Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP, part of Montage Health), Salinas Valley Health and Natividad.”

Since the OHCA’s first board meeting in March 2023, many Monterey County workers have traveled to Sacramento to describe their difficulties in financing health care in a region whose hospital care is among the most expensive in the state, the Labor Center letter said. The workers’ testimony and available data demonstrate the extent to which Monterey is an outlier when it comes to high hospital prices, even in a state where health care affordability issues are widespread.

The UC Berkeley Labor Center letter said an analysis by the Health Care Cost Institute found that the Salinas metropolitan area, which includes Monterey, had the highest inpatient prices and the second-highest outpatient prices of all metropolitan areas analyzed nationwide in 2021.

According to Health Access and the UC Berkeley Labor Center, presentations by staff from OHCA, Covered California, CalPERS and a Brown University health economist will include data showing the unusually high prices in Monterey County. Some will discuss health care market concentration as a contributing factor.

The OHCA board meeting provides an important opportunity to play a role in communities struggling to afford care through high-cost outliers and/or entire high-cost outliers in health care, the letter from the UC Berkeley Labor Center states. This month’s meeting will begin the process of data-driven investigation into the true causes of health care spending. We hope that in the coming weeks and months, OHCA staff and board will continue this data-driven analysis and make strategic decisions about how they will measure and enforce statewide spending targets and set spending targets for high-cost outliers.

To view the meeting agenda and access a link to watch the meeting virtually, go to https://hcai.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/August-2024-OHCA-Board-Meeting-Agenda.pdf