Measures aim to limit patient costs at Stanford hospitals

A union that represents Stanford health care employees has qualified two November ballot measures asking voters to restrict patient expenses at the university’s hospitals in Palo Alto and Livermore.

Although SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West also initiated petition drives to qualify similar measures in Redwood City and Pleasanton where Stanford operates hospitals too, union spokesman Sean Wherley said it dropped those efforts partly because of costs. And in Emeryville, a similar drive ended when the city attorney there sued the union.

Stanford has healthcare facilities in all five cities.

“We’ve chosen to focus our resources on just Palo Alto and Livermore,” Wherley said.

Stanford general counsel Debra Zumwalt wrote in a June 6 letter to Palo Alto officials that the initiative would be unconstitutional and the university “intends to challenge the validity of the measure.”

SEIU’s initiatives would limit the amount Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto and Stanford Health Care-Valley-Care Medical Center in Livermore can charge patients to no more than 15 percent above the actual cost of providing care. If approved by voters, the initiatives would take effect Jan. 1.

If either hospital is found to exceed those rates, it would be required to issue rebates or reduce patients’ bills, according to the union.

“If it passes, the Palo Alto community’s access to worldclass health care will be unnecessarily jeopardized.” — Stanford statement

“The prices hospitals charge has gotten out of control,” Charles Fonseca, a Stanford certified nursing assistant, said in a union press release. “This initiative will make patients — not profits — the priority for healthcare providers in Palo Alto.”

Zumwalt said the initiative would be impractical for the city to enforce.

“The billing, rebate, and penalty process set out in

the Initiative would place extraordinary burdens on the City,” she wrote.

Stanford said in its statement that contrary to what the union contends, the initiatives will not expand access to affordable, highquality care. The union is just trying to drive up membership, the statement adds.

“The true objective of this initiative appears to be nothing more than an SEIU-Union Healthcare Workers West (UHW) effort to gain paying members and to distort facts about our organization in the process,” the statement reads. “If it passes, the Palo Alto community’s access to world-class health care will be unnecessarily jeopardized.”

The Palo Alto City Council certified the initiative for the November ballot on a 7-0 vote, with councilmen Tom DuBois and Greg Tanaka absent. The Livermore City Council is expected to discuss the initiative at its June 25 meeting, at which time it could certify it for the ballot or adopt it outright.