SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Healthcare Executive Compensation Act, a statewide ballot initiative aimed at addressing excessive pay for hospital executives, has received its official title and summary from the California Attorney General’s Office. The approval marks a major step forward in the campaign and allows signature collection to begin to qualify the initiative for the November 2026 ballot.

At a time when healthcare facilities across the country are facing massive federal budget cuts that threaten critical programs like Medicaid, healthcare workers say it’s more important than ever that every healthcare dollar be invested in providing quality patient care, not in multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

The initiative seeks to address the growing gap between excessive healthcare executive salaries and the realities faced by frontline workers and patients.

“At a time when healthcare executives are collecting multimillion-dollar paychecks while patients delay care and frontline workers struggle to make ends meet, it’s clear the system is broken,” said Mayra Casteneda, an ultrasound technologist in Lynwood.  “This initiative is about putting healthcare dollars where they belong – into patient care, safer staffing, and expanding access – instead of rewarding healthcare executives for maintaining a status quo that puts profits over patient care.”

The proposed measure would cap total annual compensation for executives, administrators, and managers at nonprofit and for-profit hospitals and medical groups at $450,000 per year. Frontline healthcare workers say that figure is more than sufficient and believe that redirecting excessive pay toward workforce investments and patient care is long overdue.

Many of California’s largest health systems bring in massive annual revenues but continue to pour millions into executive pay while frontline workers struggle to make ends meet and patients can’t afford care. Healthcare workers say the current system rewards executives for maintaining the status quo, diverting resources away from patient care.

With the title and summary now issued, frontline healthcare workers are preparing to launch a signature-gathering campaign across the state to place the initiative before voters in 2026.

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SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is a healthcare justice union of more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare activists united to ensure affordable, accessible, high-quality care for all Californians provided by valued and respected healthcare workers. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.

Paid for by Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers