Monterey County’s expensive health care is under the microscope.

The high cost of health care in Monterey County has drawn a lot of attention in Sacramento, enough to make folks from the state capital travel here to hear first hand from residents how that’s impacted their lives.

Pam Marino here, after attending a health care affordability town hall on Thursday, July 9, inside the Monterey County Board of Supervisors Chambers in Salinas, organized by the advocacy group Health Access California. It was the first in a series of town halls the organization is holding throughout the state in the coming weeks.

In the audience of approximately 60 people on Thursday was incoming Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Dan Burns, Monterey City Councilmember Gino Garcia, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh, Seaside Mayor Ian Oglesby and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability Board, Ian Lewis.

The reason Monterey County was HAC’s first stop has everything to do with hospital costs here. That our hospitals are some of the highest priced in the state has been well documented. The Weekly has reported extensively on the issue.

HAC released a study on July 3, “High Cost Hospitals in California’s Central Coast,” focusing on three of the state’s highest-cost hospitals in the state: Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Salinas Valley Health and Dignity Health - Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. The hospitals charge 3 to 4 times what Medicare charges for the same services.

Nearly three-quarters of Californians with low incomes report skipping or forgoing care and more than one-third of all residents have medical debt, with Black and Latino residents carrying more debt than others, HAC reported.

The Monterey County visit and subsequent town halls precede an important upcoming meeting of the state’s Office of Health Care Affordability Board on Aug. 26 in Sacramento. The board is expected to decide penalties for hospitals that spend over an annual cap set by the OHCA Board in 2024—currently set at 3.5 percent over the previous year’s spending level, eventually landing at 3 percent by 2029.

Last year the Board slashed that cap to 1.8 percent for CHOMP, SVH and five other hospitals in the state, calling them “high-cost outliers.” The caps are designed to slow overall hospital spending in the state.

On Thursday, members of the audience were encouraged to share their own stories of the impact of the high cost of health care, including on videos to be shared publicly. HAC is gathering the stories to encourage the OHCA Board ahead of the August meeting.

Roslyn Book, a sixth-grade teacher with the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, and president of the Monterey Bay Teachers Association, shared her experience after a trip to CHOMP’s emergency room for a gash she suffered in a fall. 

“Eleven stitches later we went home and we got a bill for $15,000. It was really difficult,” she said.

You can submit your own story through a form on HAC’s website. OHCA also takes public comment during meetings, including the upcoming one on Aug. 26. Details on how to participate will be included on an agenda, which will be released later in August.