2021 YEAR IN REVIEW The California Medical Association (CMA) was once again at the center of key state health care policy decisions and action. With CMA’s help, California helped set an example for the nation in vaccinating residents, even as we coped with the rise of the delta variant. In addition to our work on COVID-19, CMA won key victories for physicians in the state budget, helped increase funding for public health and continues to build our physician workforce to help deal with chronic shortages across the state.
COVID-19 Vaccines: CMA worked closely with the Newsom Administration to ensure all Californians had access to vaccines, providing mapping data and physician feedback to help the state build a distribution network that allowed community-based physicians to obtain vaccines for their patients. CalVaxGrant: CMA helped establish and administer the CalVaxGrant program, which provided $40 million to physician practices to help offset the costs of obtaining, storing and administering COVID vaccines.
Justice, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: CMA created new Standards for Cultural Linguistic Competency and Implicit Bias in continuing medical education.
Telehealth: CMA sponsored AB 457 (Santiago), which ensures patients can access telehealth services from their selected health care providers, rather than a third-party corporate telehealth provider.
Billing Disputes: CMA’s Center for Economic Services recouped more than $1 million from payors on behalf of physician members.
COVID-19 Payments: CMA sponsored SB 510 (Pan), which requires health insurers to cover the cost of COVID-19 tests and vaccine administration.
Vaping Tax: CMA helped pass an increase in the tax on e-cigarettes and vaping products to more closely mirror the taxes on other tobacco products. The bill also ensures future funding for physician workforce programs, such as the physician loan repayment program.
Physician Workforce: CMA successfully advocated to make permanent a portion of Prop. 56 tobacco funds to pay for physician loan repayment and graduate medical education.
State Budget: In the budget process, CMA helped ensure state policy conformed to federal tax law with regard to Paycheck Protection Program loans for physician practices and made permanent the Prop. 56 supplemental payments for Medi-Cal providers.
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