One Community Health Formally Opposes Proposition 44
One Community Health’s Board of Directors has taken a formal position opposing Proposition 44 on the November ballot. Along with that decision, the Board has committed to educating our patients, partners, and the broader public about how this initiative would affect our ability to serve patients across the Sacramento region.
We’re not doing this alone. One Community Health joins a wide coalition of health centers, providers, hospitals, community organizations, and labor groups across California in opposing this measure. As an organization built to expand access to care, we see it as our responsibility to speak up when something threatens that access because quality health care is something every person deserves.
What Prop. 44 could mean for your care
Prop. 44 limits community health centers’ ability to grow, invest, and expand. That might sound like an organizational or financial issue, but it has a direct effect on the care you receive:
- Longer waits for appointments. If we can’t grow to keep pace with demand, there are fewer open slots to go around.
- Fewer new locations, which means longer drives. Prop. 44 makes it harder to open new health centers closer to where you live.
- Slower referrals and prescription refills. Without the flexibility to invest in staff and infrastructure, it becomes harder to keep pace with the services you rely on.
- Fewer services over time. Restrictions on investment make it harder to add or expand programs like behavioral health, dental, or specialty care.
The bigger picture:
- It rips apart the healthcare safety net that community health centers have spent decades strengthening. Prop. 44 will limit future opportunities to expand care, and it undermines the safety net, which is already weakened by federal healthcare funding cuts.
- It pushes people toward emergency rooms. When patients lose access to clinic-based care, many end up in hospital emergency rooms for routine needs, driving up ER overcrowding, wait times, and costs for everyone.
Community members, especially those with Medi-Cal, already have limited options for care, and community health centers like One Community Health are working to increase access and services. If we don’t have the flexibility to invest, adapt, and expand responsibly, patients lose opportunities for care.
Please feel empowered to learn more about what’s at stake, including how Prop. 44 could affect our ability to grow and innovate to continue meeting the needs of the patients who depend on us.
Learn more, get engaged, and spread the word: onecommunityhealth.com/noprop44
