The History
UCLA Health and provider groups like HCLA have a storied history of turning its back on the most vulnerable patients in favor of efforts to commodify public healthcare.
The MIC: Profit over patients by design
In 1969, the Health Policy Advisory Center (Health/PAC) coined the term “medical-industrial complex” to describe how academic medical centers grow their power and wealth, often treating poor communities as teaching material and research subjects and holding them at a distance when it comes to care.
Public money moved around using market logics
Nearly 90% of Medi-Cal members in California get their care through managed care plans, which are paid a fixed amount per member and then decide what care is authorized. Public funding is passed to these health plans, then to IPAs like HCLA, then to the clinics withing the IPAs networks. Each step presents an opportunity to stratify need and deservingness, framed mostly around profitability. Are public funds still a public good if they are spent in ways that benefit the market and ignore the people needing services?
Source: California Department of Health Care Services, Medi-Cal Managed Care
Skewed Infrastructure
Where outpatient care is never built, people end up hospitalized for conditions that should have been managed long before. Adults in South LA, where 35.2% are covered by Medi-Cal, are hospitalized for preventable conditions at a rate of 1,252 per 100,000. In West LA, home to UCLA and where only 10.7% of adults are on Medi-Cal, the rate is 735 — the lowest in the county. UCLA’s own researchers describe rates like these as a sign that “outpatient care is insufficient for the needs of the people living there.”
Source: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, April 2024 (2016–2021 data)
Trained on our communities
Teaching hospitals historically rely on patients from low-income communities to train new doctors. When those patients no longer yield sufficient profit, they are implicitly deemed useless and are often disconnected from care, despite teaching universities priding themselves on “community-centered care.” Moreover, community voices are seldom consulted when devising networks of care within academic institutions, and said networks have little to no accountability to the communities in LA.
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How have UCLA and HCLA contributed to the MIC?
1966
Medi-Cal begins
California launches Medi-Cal, its version of the new federal Medicaid program, promising health coverage to low-income Californians.
1970s–1980s
Cuts, managed care, and lost coverage
In 1982, California eliminates Medi-Cal coverage for “medically indigent adults,” and beginning in 1983 some 270,000 low-income adults become uninsured. A 1986 study by UCLA’s own Center for the Health Sciences found that a year after losing coverage, these former Medi-Cal patients’ health had measurably declined.
2009
UCLA Health contracts with Health Care LA
A contract with Health Care LA begins connecting UCLA specialists to Medi-Cal patients from HCLA’s network of LA County community health centers. Patients benefiting from this contract largely have complex medical needs that the public safety net cannot otherwise address.
Source: Hoodline, Sept. 2026
2018
A limited deal with LA Care
UCLA signs its first three-year contract with LA Care, another Medi-Cal insurer. However, the deal’s coverage is narrow. LA Care’s 2.2 million members are able to receive advanced care at UCLA only when deemed medically necessary. Only about 3,500 of these patients are eligible for primary care at UCLA under the current contract provisions.
Dec. 2020 – March 2021
UCLA buys Olympia Medical Center and shuts it down
On Dec. 31, 2020, the closure of Olympia Medical Center in Mid-City is announced. UCLA Health takes ownership of the hospital in January 2021 and leases it back to its former operator while services are wound down, and the hospital closes for good on March 31, 2021. The community hospital had been a fixture in the neighborhood since the 1940s, treating over 25,000 patients in 2019 and serving a population that was disproportionately Black, low-income, and elderly.
Despite overwhelming community support for a moratorium period to keep the hospital open for at least 6 more months, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital closed on schedule.
Sources: Beverly Press, Jan. 2021; Daily Bruin, Jan. 30, 2021; CBS Los Angeles, 2021; DOTmed, April 5, 2021
Nov. 2022
Plans to fold Olympia into UCLA Health’s neoliberal, financialized care model
UCLA unveils plans to turn the former Olympia site into a 119-bed neuropsychiatric hospital, adding capacity to the current Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. No emergency department or general acute care will return to the neighborhood the hospital once served. Resnick historically sees a mostly white, privately insured patient population. Resnick’s outpatient clinics are almost entirely commercially insured. Under 1% of its outpatient visits are covered by Medi-Cal, against a statewide average of about 30%. In contrast, Olympia previously served a largely Medicare and Medi-Cal population. Nearly 30% of its admitted patients were covered by Medi-Cal, and more than 40% were Black. UCLA has yet to mention if they will address these disparities.
Sources: Urbanize LA, Nov. 21, 2022; HCAI hospital profile, Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA (payer mix, FY 2024–25); National Nurses United, Jan. 7, 2021
2024
Expansion of UCLA Health, but not for Medi-Cal patients
On Jan. 26, UCLA Health announces it will buy West Hills Hospital and Medical Center from for-profit chain HCA Healthcare, renaming it UCLA West Valley Medical Center.
In its first reporting period under UCLA, state hospital data show Medi-Cal made up just 15.7% of inpatient revenue at West Valley Medical Center, less than half the statewide average of 31.7% and similar to UCLA Health’s historical average of 15%. Rather than using the new hospital acquisition to expand services to more Medi-Cal patients, UCLA chose to simply expand services to those who could pay the most and preserve its bottom line.
Sources: Daily Bruin, Jan. 26, 2024; Healthcare Dive; UCLA External Affairs, March 29, 2024; HCAI hospital profile; Hoodline, Sept. 2026
2025
Record growth, lowest Medi-Cal share
June 30, 2026
The Health Care LA contract ends as both sides cannot agree on the distribution of extracted value from patients
UCLA cites “capacity issues” at Ronald Reagan. Health Care LA claims that UCLA declined to renegotiate, though UCLA claims it offered an extension that was rejected.
With predominantly poor, black and brown, disabled, and otherwise marginalized lives on the line, these morally bankrupt institutions care only about how they can extract the optimal social/economic value from patients. Meanwhile, privileged patients see no interruptions to their care, solely because they are able to pay the high premiums.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 5, 2026; Hoodline, Sept. 2026
September 2026
Both sides refuse to reach an agreement
On Sept. 3, Health Care LA holds a press conference and announces a complaint against UCLA Health with the California Attorney General.
Sources: Health Care LA, IPA, press release, Sept. 2, 2026; Hoodline, Sept. 2026; Parriva, Sept. 5, 2026
Now
