About CaPA

The California Physicians’ Alliance (CAPA) was founded in 1987 to promote progressive change in health care at the state and local levels. In 1993, CaPA became the California chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, a national non-profit organization.

CaPA’s mission is promoting a single payer health program to improve, expand access to, and promote justice in health care. CAPA believes that it is important for physicians, medical students, and other health professionals to have a distinct progressive voice informing health care policy at the state and national levels.

For many years, CAPA has played a significant role in promoting health care reform in California through universal health care legislation to make publicly financed, privately delivered, high quality comprehensive health care available to the entire population.

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.