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Please note: CalPERS has taken down the job posting celebrated below. Also, the EPA has removed a comprehensive environmental justice and toxic exposure map, EJScreen from its website, and the CDC has removed an interactive data visualization map of census tract level life expectancy. Both are available on the internet’s way back machine. Working on health policy in the 2nd Trump term will be arduous.
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My name is Daniel Lichtenstein-Boris. In the fall of 2023, while working at LA County Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Division, Office of Environmental Justice and Climate Health, I wrote a white paper on moving institutional investors for climate health. Later the next spring, I unsuccessfully ran for pension board of LACERA, the Los Angeles County Employee Retirement Association.
Pension funds in California have trillions of dollars in assets to mobilize for a humane and dignified world.
CalPERS, and other public pension funds in Democratic states, must unite the power of organized money with the expertise and clinical competence of millions of American healthcare workers to create a healthcare system that is just, equitable, universal, and cost-effective.
The United States has the highest costs of healthcare in the industrialized world, which places the nation at a competitive disadvantage. The claim denials, high deductibles, narrow networks, and co-insurance of health insurers, the high cost of prescription drugs, and the lack of coordinated care in disparate and fragmented health systems contributes to inflation in health premiums, as does a lack of investment in public health and preventive medicine. Pension funds have power, and along with Taft Hartley health plans, can create a national alternative for companies to use to cover the health benefits of their employees in the absence of national and state initiative.
Doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers, united through their unions and respective retirement plans, should have a voice in not only clinical decision making at the bedside, but also in transforming the healthcare system to one that provides better outcomes at a reduced cost.
Physician and nurses in the United States want safe nurse to patient ratios which studies have shown improves outcomes, reduces lengths of stays and readmissions, and generates cost-savings to the healthcare system as a whole. By supporting card check union neutrality in health systems where CalPERS invests, workers retirement savings can give health professionals that voice to make the system more efficient and effective. Further, by expanding collective bargaining, CalPERS can help increase the number of pension funds, and pool retirement investments to reduce costs and improve health for all American workers.
Investments in public health, substance use and violence prevention, and preventive medicine can similarly improve the health of working families and reduce costs for employers of companies where CalPERS and other pension funds invest union worker retirement savings. Comparative effectiveness research can scientifically deliver improved health outcomes at the most efficient price point possible.
Further, to engage in the medium and long-term investment decisions to safeguard th retirement security of pension beneficiaries, CalPERS and other California pension funds must address the impact of climate change on health and economic prosperity at home and abroad. If climate change impacts human health, what is the impact of rising temperatures, droughts, and fires on the life expectancy of CalPERS beneficiaries? State and local government employees whose life-guaranteed monthly premium payments are measured in actuarial values, their increased mortality from climate change will reduce the need for investment in short term returns that lead to a medium- and long-term economic risk, such as the oil and gas industry.
Moody’s investor services forecasts the economic impact of climate change on global GDP. It is time for pension funds like CalPERS to follow New York City, the University of California, and socially responsible investment portfolios to divest from oil, coal mining, and other environmentally hazardous and fiscally risky companies.
I applaud CalPERS for taking the steps to organize capital to engage in health policy by hiring a position in this field. Democratic appointees and union leaders elected to oversee CalPERS investments should come together with other pension funds to organize wall street, the healthcare industry, and employer groups.
Together, united, California can help maximize healthcare cost-savings and economic competitiveness and empower health professionals’ clinical decision making to benefit both working people’s retirement security as well as their health.
Keep up the great work.
Sincerely,
Daniel Lichtenstein-Boris, MPH