About CaPA

The California Physicians’ Alliance (CAPA) was founded in 1987 with a broad agenda for progressive change in health care at the state and local level. In 1993 CAPA voted to became a chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, and CAPA has remained the California Chapter of PNHP since that time. CAPA is a statewide 501©(3) non-profit organization. Members of CAPA believe that it is important for physicians to have a distinct progressive voice to inform health care policy at the state and national level.

Although CAPA’s long term goal, like PNHP’s, is promoting a single payer national health program, CAPA also has a broad agenda of working on incremental reforms that improve, expand access to, and promote justice in, healthcare. For more than nineteen years, CAPA has played a significant role in leading the movement for health care reform in California. CAPA has promoted universal health care proposals and advocated for specific incremental reforms that promise to provide immediate health care services to California’s most vulnerable populations.

Some of CAPA’s accomplishments have included the following:

We have organized hundreds of grand rounds and other speaking events that have educated thousands of California physicians and residents on the advantages of a single payer health care system over other incremental models of reform;

We worked on Proposition 186, the single payer health care initiative, in 1993;

CAPA worked to pass SB 480 in 1999, which resulted in the Health Care Options Project. This project examined options to expand health insurance coverage in the State of California. Work done in this project ultimately resulted in the drafting and passage of SB2 and SB 840

CAPA was instrumental in getting SB 840 , Sheila Kuehl’s Health Care Insurance Reliability Act, drafted, supported and passed by the California Senate and Assembly;

CAPA has worked on countless county initiatives to maintain healthcare funding, keep hospitals open, and maintain other healthcare services;

CAPA has worked with California Health Access to maintain the existing safety net of services in California;

CAPA has worked on a number of proposals that have served to improve and protect healthcare, including a prohibition on “patient dumping”, expansion of patients’ rights, expansion of prescription drug coverage, expansion of health coverage for kids, and promotion of fair billing and insurance practices.

Click here for a list of CaPA’s Board of Directors.