OPINION: I won’t have any regrets about going so long without a Kaiser paycheck. My only regret is that I worked for an organization so uninterested in mental health care that the best way I could help Kaiser members was to withhold my labor.
The last thing I’ll ever do as a mental health therapist for Kaiser Permanente is walk a picket line. I’m leaving Kaiser after eight years of working as a therapist in addiction medicine, and I am hardly alone.
Kaiser’s model of care forces its members to either pay out of pocket for mental health care or give up trying to receive it. And, increasingly, it's giving clinicians like me no choice other than to look for work where I know I can provide care that meets clinical standards and the needs of my patients.
I started working at Kaiser in 2014, the year it agreed to pay what at the time was a record $4 million fine for failing to meet state guidelines for providing timely access to mental health care. Kaiser forked up the cash, but it never provided the care. In November of 2020, I was one of 65 therapists at Kaiser in San Francisco who signed a letter to Kaiser management warning that patients were waiting four to five months to start individual therapy and between six to 12 weeks between appointments. Kaiser never took action and the situation hasn’t gotten better.
My hope when this strike started nearly eight weeks ago was that we could finally shame Kaiser into action. But, it hasn’t happened yet, and my time is running out.
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