Dear George Halvorson:

Kaiser Permanente which lists itself as “not for profit,” has made 5 billion dollars in profits since 2009, and rewards its top executives with pay packages worth millions of dollars a year. In 2009, in fact, you took home nearly 8 million dollars in total compensation including contributions to your multiple pension and retirement plans.

Kaiser has also spent millions of dollars lobbying Sacramento, including opposing AB 52, a bill that would provide California consumers with protection from unfair health insurance rate hikes.

Instead of working for the public good, Kaiser has been proposing to cut the health and retirement benefits of Kaiser caregivers and on July 1 raised rates for 300,000 California enrollees by an average 11%. That’s not fair.

I urge you to do the right thing and agree to caregivers’ reasonable proposals to safeguard quality care at Kaiser and protect their reasonable health and retirement benefits. I also urge you to protect California consumers by supporting AB 52. At a time of record profits, Kaiser should be protecting consumers and investing in patient care, not padding its already enormous executive pay packages.

Sincerely,