As Kaiser Workers Strike, 'Not-for-Profit' Is Sitting on $67 Billion

[Passages]

Kaiser has doubled down on hedge funds, outside staffing firms, and high executive compensation as workers lag behind.

by Matthew Cunningham-Cook October 18, 2025

Forty-five thousand workers at Kaiser Permanente—ranging from nurses to therapists to pharmacists—are on strike across the West Coast and Hawaii, in the country’s largest labor action of 2025, and the largest strike in the U.S. since the October 2024 longshore workers strike. The five-day limited-duration strike comes as workers continue to face major short staffing and wage increases that have lagged behind inflation in some of the country’s highest-cost-of-living areas.

Kaiser Permanente is an Oakland, California–headquartered integrated health care giant, with 300,000 employees, and a long track record of heavy union activity. While Kaiser is ostensibly a nonprofit, it in many ways acts like a for-profit—its physicians groups are for-profit entities, the Board of Directors is for the most part composed of people from the private sector, and the system’s executive compensation more resembles the private sector.

Kaiser CEO Greg Adams made nearly $13 million in 2023. Kaiser spent more than $72 million on total compensation for senior executives that year, with 12 executives besides Adams making over $2 million per year, and three besides Adams making over $4 million per year.

Kaiser’s care model has been celebrated for decades, and indeed, compared to UnitedHealth or the Hospital Corporation of America, Kaiser is a far better framework for health care delivery. Workers are striking not to upend the Kaiser model, they say, but to protect it against an encroaching for-profit orientation in health care and a national political environment that is utterly hostile to an ethos of patients before profits.

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-10-18-kaiser-workers-strike-not-for-profit-sitting-on-67-billion/

[justaprogressive]

1. Kaiser are NOT the angels

their PR firms would lead you to believe!!

[Sibelius Fan]

2. I've had KP for decades. It's been great. I'm on their MA since I hit retirement age.

As the insurer and the service provider, KP is unique. The insurance operation is not going to refuse to cover anything ordered by their doctors. I’ve had several expensive (over $10,000) surgeries over the past 5 years, never had a copay over $200. I’m on Ozempic - my October refill cost me $0. September was 21¢. I’m not kidding.

[justaprogressive]

3. meanwhile they've screwed their workforce

going on a decade or so...they took care of you at the expense of their employees!

[Sibelius Fan]

4. The issue isn't underpaying their workforce. It's understaffing.

The union is demanding a 25% wage increase over 4 years. Kaiser is offering 21.5%. My guess is that they’ll settle at 22-23%.

I’ve discussed the situation with my doctors. To a person, it’s not at all about wages or benefits. It’s about long hours and being overworked due to staffing issues. From what I’ve read, KP pays above the market rate, so the pay isn’t the real issue.

[justaprogressive]

5. yes a LONG HISTORY of understaffing we agree!

ex: [link:Kaiser Permanente’s historic labor-management deal survives again| from 4 yrs ago.

who said it was money? Not me.

[MichMan]

6. Every one quoted in the OP complained about the pay being substandard

Nothing was there about staffing levels

[erronis]

7. I don't think the pro-KP patients have looked at the financial structure of this "non-profit"

As the article calls out, it is running as a shell of a non-profit with plenty of profiteers (CEOs, etc.) and subsidiaries (physician's groups) all taking enormous PROFITS.

This model is pervasive in our sick health-care industry. Money is in charge, staff are vehicles to make money, and the patients are the suckers.