Center in the News

In 2017, the state Senate Appropriations Committee estimated that operating a single-payer system would cost $400 billion annually, requiring an additional $200 billion in new taxes to cover the cost. While the prospect of new taxes can be unsettling, California residents already spend $367 billion on health care each year, with taxpayers footing 70% of that, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Replacing employer-provided insurance may not be as dramatic a shift to our paychecks or tax filings as some suggest.

While the prospect of new taxes can be unsettling, California residents already spend $367 billion on health care each year, with taxpayers footing 70% of that, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Replacing employer-provided insurance may not be as dramatic a shift to our paychecks or tax filings as some suggest.

We are so grateful to the APHA Aging and Public Health Section for renaming the lifetime achievement award in Steve Wallace’s honor,” said Ninez Ponce, professor of health policy and management and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “Steve Wallace was a trailblazer, who fought tirelessly for older adults and communities of color … Steve was a remarkable person, who made a difference in the lives of so many people, and his legacy will live on through all of us.

A new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research examines how the state’s Whole Person Care program, a pilot project launched in 2016 to integrate medical care, mental health services and social supports like housing aid for Medi-Cal beneficiaries from these vulnerable populations, responded to the pandemic’s challenges. In many cases, the findings show, Whole Person Care’s 25 county-based pilot programs were able to successfully pivot in order to continue providing health and social services and enroll participants.

In April of last year, the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research released a report estimating that 3.2 million Californians would remain without health coverage in 2022. Separate research from the Public Policy Institute of California found that nearly half that number were immigrants, and of those a significant number were undocumented. Indeed, the Labor Center’s findings suggest that 1.27 million undocumented immigrants in California lack health coverage.

According to a study conducted jointly by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, nearly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants under the age of 65 lack health insurance in California. This is staggering when compared to only 10% of all other Californians in the same age range.

A commentary written by Cathy Kennedy, president of the California Nurses Association, cites a UCLA CHPR policy brief, which found that more Black and Latino Californians self-rationed needed care due to cost or insurance barriers than for white Californians.

In 2016, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that about half of California adults either had prediabetes or were undiagnosed diabetics. Two years later, California reported a higher number of new diabetes cases than any other U.S. state, according to state data.

In 2020, one in seven Californians skipped, delayed, or cut back on care, 60 percent of them due to cost, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found last September.

But the relationship of other countries to fee-for-service medicine is somewhat complicated, according to Thomas Rice, PhD, professor of health policy and management at the University of California Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health. For example, he said in an email, "Canada is known for relying on fee-for-service, but in Ontario, the largest province, there is mainly a mix of capitation, salary, and P4P [pay for performance]-type payments." The Netherlands "combines capitation and fee-for-service with global payments for certain procedures, and a small amount of P4P," he said.