Press Releases
UNAC/UHCP Statement: Kaiser Should Stop Distracting and Start Explaining Where The Money Goes
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 26, 2025
Contact: press@unacuhcp.org
UNAC/UHCP Statement: Kaiser Should Stop Distracting and Start Explaining Where The Money Goes
Kaiser Permanente’s latest claims attempt to paint our union as the story. It isn’t.
The story is what patients and working families tell us they are living every day: delayed care and a growing disconnect between what Kaiser promises—and what Kaiser delivers.
This doesn’t change the fact that Kaiser has lost sight of its original mission.
Kaiser says that a meeting was “outside the normal process” and that the union is withholding critical information
Then, Kaiser should explain two things:
- How is this meeting “outside the process” when Kaiser agreed to it—and the independent mediator was present?
- If Kaiser truly believed anything improper was happening, why did it accept the meeting but decline even to review union concerns about Kaiser’s finances and institutional activities?
Kaiser’s statements is not clarity. It is a smokescreen.
Kaiser’s “threat” narrative is an attempt to change the subject
Kaiser wants the public focused on vague insinuations instead of Kaiser’s months-long bargaining behavior and the real crisis in care delivery.
For months, our bargaining teams have shown up ready to resolve straightforward patient-care issues—staffing, scheduling, retention, and outsourcing—only to face avoidable delays and stonewalling.
Bargaining teams have sat for hours waiting for responses to basic proposals that would ease scheduling crunches, bring in more staff, keep the ones we have, and reduce outsourcing so patients can be seen within the reasonable timeframes Kaiser sells to health plan purchasers.
Instead of moving solutions, Kaiser has too often moved confusion—walking away from the table, going silent, failing to even show up and leaving our teams with no one to bargain important issues with, and instead sending misleading communications directly to frontline union members at odd hours, including in the middle of the night—all seeming to serve no purpose but disruption.
Let’s talk about what is relevant to patient care: staffing, respect, and fair pay
Kaiser behaves as if these broader concerns aren’t relevant. That is exactly backwards.
Patient care depends on whether Kaiser can recruit and retain the professionals who provide it—registered nurses, physician assistants, rehab therapists, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, pharmacists, dietitians, and so many other clinicians who have kept Kaiser patients safe and stable, whether they have routine, chronic or catastrophic conditions—all despite profit-driven roadblocks and needless understaffing.
When Kaiser follows a corporate playbook that reduces the spending power of paychecks and strength of benefits, expands outsourcing, and resists meaningful staffing commitments, it destabilizes care. And that’s a fact that no Kaiser spin can deny.
And when its executives tell the very health care professionals who carried Kaiser through the COVID era that cost-of-living increases are somehow “too much,” the public has a right to ask:
Where is the money going?
The question Kaiser won’t answer: What is Kaiser doing with member premium dollars?
Kaiser is a powerful institution built on decades of partnership with working people and unions. That legacy comes with responsibility.
Working families pay hard-earned money—premiums, copays, deductibles—because Kaiser promises timely access and quality care. If Kaiser is collecting those dollars while patients face delays and caregivers face staffing crises, then it should stop the PR spin machine. Kaiser should welcome the scrutiny.
So, we are inviting it.
We invite journalists, regulators, watchdogs, and the public to examine Kaiser’s finances and priorities—especially the gap between Kaiser’s financial strength and the conditions in clinics and hospitals.
Public records and independent assessments already raise urgent questions about resources and priorities. If Kaiser wants to pause bargaining and posture about motives, it can also answer—directly and in public—how its spending aligns with patient access and safe staffing.
We hide nothing. We are asking for transparency.
Our members have raised staffing and access concerns publicly and through official channels. Patients and caregivers have been sounding the alarm for years. If Kaiser believes it is meeting its obligations, it should prove it—with openness, not accusations.
Public Records/Helpful Links
Kaiser Foundation Hospitals — ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/941105628
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. — ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/941340523
Fitch Ratings: “Fitch Affirms Kaiser Permanente, CA at ‘AA-’; Outlook Stable” (June 20, 2025):
UNAC/UHCP: “New Report Details Kaiser Permanente’s $67 Billion in Financial Reserves” (Oct. 20, 2025):
https://unacuhcp.org/news/new-report-details-kp-reserves
UNAC/UHCP InvestinPatientCare.org page:
http://unacuhcp.org/investinpatientcare.org
UNAC/UHCP Caregivers action page (share your story):
https://unacuhcp.org/caregivers-action
Kaiser Permanente: “Timely Access to Scheduled Appointments”
https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/doctors-locations/timely-access-to-scheduled-appointments