Kaiser Permanente reaches settlement in class action lawsuit

Kaiser Permanente officials settled a class action lawsuit over mental health patients illegally forced to switch to Medi‐Cal. The settlement requires Kaiser to pay plaintiffs $10,000 each and attorneys' fees of up to $1.2 million, a press release from the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) stated. “This settlement validates what thousands of Kaiser mental health clinicians were saying [this month] on picket lines across California: Kaiser is illegally denying patients appropriate mental health care, and it must work with clinicians to fix the problem,” NUHW President Sal Rosselli said. “There is no excuse for Kaiser, which has more than $42 billion in cash and investments, to pawn off members who need expensive treatment onto taxpayers.” Earlier this month, approximately 4,000 psychologists, social workers, therapists, psychiatrists, addiction specialists and medical professionals staged pickets outside Kaiser facilities throughout the state (see MHW , Dec. 17). During the strike, it was revealed that Kaiser quietly settled a 2014 class action lawsuit on related issues. Families of patients with serious mental health issues accused the insurer of illegally dumping mental health patients onto Medi‐Cal rolls and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for their treatment. Under the settlement, Kaiser must also confirm that its health plan does cover treatment in locked residential facilities for patients with mental health diagnoses and provide proper instructions to its employees for treating those patients.