The politicization of Orange County’s healthcare plan for the poor got pulled out for all to see this week during a debate over whether county supervisors should remain in charge of public health insurance.
While state legislators ultimately opted to leave OC Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Janet Nguyen on CalOptima’s board, the debate highlighted how healthcare for nearly one in three county residents can change at the whim of a handful of politicians in Santa Ana and Sacramento.
Assemblyman’s Bid to Boot Supervisors Falls Through
The debate started last week when Assemblyman Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim) reworked a bill to remove Nguyen and Sarmiento from the CalOptima board and institute a new panel with no politicians, instead relying primarily on county department heads to represent them.
“Removing the supervisors and placing selection in independent hands de-politicizes the board and keeps its governance separate from politics,” Valencia wrote in a statement last Thursday. “These good governance reforms keep the board focused on one job, looking out for the people CalOptima serves.”
The plan also called for removing supervisors’ ability to pick board members and replacing them with a new selection committee including an assemblyman, state senator, and congressman.
[Read: Could OC Supervisors Lose Control of County’s Health Plan for the Poor?]
His proposal comes after the agency has faced nearly a decade of scandals and investigations connected to county supervisors serving on its board, including Nguyen and former Supervisor Andrew Do, who’s currently serving a five-year prison sentence for bribery.
[Read: Top Official Resigns From OC’s Health Plan for the Poor Following Revelations of State Probe]
Valencia directly pointed to those issues as a reason for his bill, saying that his bill was called for “after the well-documented, politically charged issues that have surrounded this board in recent years,” in a statement to Voice of OC.
Supervisors pushed back at an emergency CalOptima board meeting last Thursday and at their own board meeting on Tuesday, saying it started because Valencia couldn’t get a phone call returned from the county during the Garden Grove chemical tank incident.
“Today, CalOptima is arguably the strongest and most stable it’s been,” Sarmiento said during Tuesday’s supervisors meeting, adding it was “something we can be proud of.”
That evening, Sarmiento announced that Valencia was looking to change his bill yet again, though the final details remained unclear.
By Wednesday evening, Valencia had removed any mention of kicking supervisors off the board, instead calling for another audit of the agency.
Is CalOptima Cleaned Out?
Supervisors have repeatedly pointed out that Do is no longer involved with the agency and that they’ve run several audits confirming there are no more scandals hiding in the closet.
But Do’s pick to run the agency, CEO Michael Hunn, is still working there, with plans to retire at the end of the year, alongside Do’s former deputy chief of staff Veronica Carpenter who also works at the agency as its Chief Administrative Officer.
[Read: Local Politicos Fuel Takeover of Orange County’s Health Plan For the Poor]
Auditors brought in to review Do’s conduct said they found no evidence he accepted bribes at the agency, but also admitted they weren’t given many records to review.
[Read: Does OC’s Healthplan for the Poor Really Know What It’s Spending On?]
Supervisors also have largely refused to acknowledge a grand jury report titled “CalOptima Burns While Majority of Supervisors Fiddle” that laid out how Nguyen’s arrival on the agency’s board in 2011 was “disruptive and created an atmosphere that according to current and former CalOptima employees is ‘unsafe for senior executives.’”
To read that report, click here.
[Read: OC Grand Jury Issues Scathing Report on CalOptima]
She also faced questions at the time from her fellow supervisors and former CalOptima board members about her control of the agency during her first term as Supervisor more than a decade ago.
[Read: Nguyen Harshly Criticized by Colleagues Over CalOptima Audit]
Politics and Public Health
Nguyen and Do’s impact on the board has opened up questions from many on whether the agency as a whole should be shuttered in favor of something else, including former board chair Ed Kasic, who was pushed off the board in 2012 when Nguyen initially joined.
[Read: How Politicized is Public Healthcare in Orange County?]
“I think the idea is good, I don’t think the supervisors should be on the board,” Kacic said in a Thursday interview. “I think the board ought to be as independent as possible knowing they have a lot of responsibility and the supervisors have the ultimate responsibility.”
“I think the health plan has maybe outlived its need.”
Last Thursday, Maura Byron, the current vice chair of CalOptima, said that while she didn’t agree with Valencia’s idea, she said the board may need more insulation from politics.
“Part of me says I think CalOptima should be insulated from day to day political pressure and I think this is really evident right now,” Byron said during Thursday’s meeting. “The people who really need to be here to make decisions are healthcare professionals, people who have skin in the game.”
Sarmiento also said the board’s function is inherently political, pointing out how even if he was removed, other politicians would join the selection committee instead.
“Well it’s impossible to pull politics out of any board. I don’t think CalOptima is unique,” Sarmiento said in an interview. “Appointees can be easily influenced by others that make those appointments.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
