Salesforce, Google, Facebook. How Big Tech Undermines California’s Public Health System.

 

 

“Newsom’s unprecedented reliance on private companies — including health and technology start-ups — has come at the expense of California’s overtaxed and underfunded public health system. Current and former public health officials say Newsom has entrusted the essential work of government to private-sector health and tech allies, hurting the ability of the state and local health departments to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future threats.”

 

 

Salesforce, Google, Facebook. How Big Tech Undermines California’s Public Health System.

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced Silicon Valley tech companies and health care industry titans in response to the covid-19 pandemic like no other governor in America — routinely outsourcing life-or-death public health duties to his allies in the private sector.

At least 30 tech and health care companies have received lucrative, no-bid government contracts, or helped fund and carry out critical public health activities during the state’s battle against the coronavirus, a KHN analysis has found. The vast majority are Newsom supporters and donors who have contributed more than $113 million to his political campaigns and charitable causes, or to fund his policy initiatives, since his first run for statewide office in 2010.

 

 

For instance, the San Francisco-based software company Salesforce — whose CEO, Marc Benioff, is a repeat donor and is so tight with the governor that Newsom named him the godfather of his first child — helped create My Turn, California’s centralized vaccine clearinghouse, which has been unpopular among Californians seeking shots and has so far cost the state $93 million.

Verily Life Sciences, a sister company of Google, another deep-pocketed Newsom donor, received a no-bid contract in March 2020 to expand covid testing — a $72 million venture that the state later retreated on. And after Newsom handed another no-bid testing contract — now valued at $600 million — to OptumServe, its parent company, national insurance giant UnitedHealth Group dropped $100,000 into a campaign account he can tap to fight the recall effort against him.

Newsom’s unprecedented reliance on private companies — including health and technology start-ups — has come at the expense of California’s overtaxed and underfunded public health system. Current and former public health officials say Newsom has entrusted the essential work of government to private-sector health and tech allies, hurting the ability of the state and local health departments to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future threats.

“This outsourcing is weakening us. The lack of investment in our public health system is weakening us,” said Flojaune Cofer, a former state Department of Public Health epidemiologist and senior director of policy for Public Health Advocates, which has lobbied unsuccessfully for years for more state public health dollars.

Private Resources, Public Health

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

 

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