SACRAMENTO — Frustrated that years of financing studies and demonstration projects have not translated into widespread improvement in medicine, California philanthropic foundations and think tanks are shedding their traditionally detached stances to crusade for healthcare reform in the state Capitol and in Congress.
Several of the biggest foundations have established offices in Sacramento and staffed them with experienced former advisors to lawmakers, with the aim of educating legislators to embrace their ideas.
The approach is a notable change in the foundation world, which in the past has maintained an academic distance from the political arena. It is also a delicate endeavor because such nonprofits are barred under Internal Revenue Service rules from lobbying or engaging in partisan politics. With billions of dollars at their disposal, the foundations are seeking to become bigger players.
In November, the California Endowment, a Los Angeles-based foundation with more than $3 billion in assets, announced that it was hiring Daniel Zingale, a senior advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he starts later this month, Zingale will encourage policies the endowment favors, including ensuring that all children have health coverage and making doctors and hospitals focus more on disease prevention and the management of chronic ailments.
A onetime AIDS activist and HMO regulator, Zingale led Schwarzenegger's 2007 campaign to expand healthcare to all Californians; that $14.9-billion proposal was rejected by legislators last January.
"We really consider ourselves to be supporting positive change and not just making grants," said Dr. Robert Ross, the endowment's president.
The New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank underwritten by foundations, has crossed even further into policymaking since opening a California office more than four years ago. In 2007, its experts helped Schwarzenegger develop his proposal to expand coverage and promoted it publicly, even appearing at a news conference with the governor. New America's experts can have so much contact with lawmakers that the foundation requires them to keep track of their hours to ensure they do not exceed lobbying limits set on nonprofits.
The California Health Care Foundation, based in Oakland, has taken a less blunt tack since opening its Sacramento office, where it employs a former legislative health expert who helps ensure that the foundation's research topics are relevant to legislative agendas.
