Governance Board March 2025 update
The Governing Board for the UHP met March 20, 2025
Summary by Sandra Coyner, HCAO/HCAO-Action (SandraCoyner@hcao.org)
Good news: * The new Executive Director for the Universal Health Care Plan will be Dr. Miriam McDowell, whose former employment was wide-ranging including PacificSource Health Plans.
* Mary Lou Hennrich has joined the Board in the position formerly held by Warren George.
Bad news: The Governing Board’s two top staffers below the E.D. (Jenny and Katy) are both leaving for other jobs–as learned within the last two days.. Because the staff is decimated, the Board and most of its committees will take a month’s “pause” in their work, resuming a month later.
Committee updates and actions: CECC and F&R gave brief reports.
Straw proposals from Program design (PD): Behavioral Health proposal was sent back for wording changes. Long Term care was accepted as giving the PD responsibility to define (and set up?) a separate sub-committee to work on the difficult issue of Long Term Care.
Straw proposal from Ops was accepted to move forward with a Public Corporation structure.
The GB discussed future plans and topics for over an hour. Presumably the issues raised will go into strategic planning by the GB to take place at another meeting (May 15 ?? ).
Of particular concern are: CECC reported twice that although it can fulfill expectations for outreach to specific constituencies, it does not have the capacity to do any outreach to the general public. Also, CECC wants a way that feedback from the public can be incorporated into the plan. Ops reported it is not possible to set up a transition plan in the months allocated to a yet-to-be-appointed Transition Committee.
Other planning issues include how much the Governing Board will be working on Interim or “gap” strategies that could provide “immediate win” but not (yet) achieve the actual goals of the legislation. Another issue is which should come first: the design of the system or the revenue projected .
DCBS’ willingness to provide temporary staff coverage while new staff are hired was mentioned twice, but the GB is implementing its one-month “pause” despite the long discussion of the crucial issues that are yet unresolved and some that may not be resolvable in the months before its 2026 deadline to report to Legislature.
The GB received two pages of budget information, having requested such detail several times already.
Discussion allowed clarification of meaning of several items. Concerns were noted that the budget does not contain resources for a transition or for LTC. Chair Bellanca said that the budget includes unspent money if needed, but there is concern that some funds must be allocated quiickly to be available to spend on consultants. Requesting any additional funding would require action from DCBC, the Governor and others (ie not easy).
