SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Just weeks after launching its statewide signature-gathering campaign, the Healthcare Executive Compensation Act, has already surpassed obtaining a quarter of the signatures required to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. The campaign has collected tens of thousands of signatures, showing strong and early support from California voters who want greater accountability in the healthcare system.

The proposed ballot initiative would cap excessive executive compensation at hospitals and medical groups, ensuring more healthcare dollars are directed toward improving patient care and supporting frontline workers.

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.

“Californians are making it clear that they’re ready for change,” said Mayra Castaneda, an ultrasound technologist in Lynwood. “People understand that healthcare costs keep rising while executives take home millions. Every signature represents someone who believes that healthcare dollars should be reinvested where they matter most – into patient care and the caregivers who deliver it.”

This growing momentum comes at a time when California could lose $30 billion in healthcare funding each year due to federal legislation (H.R. 1), putting additional strain on hospitals and caregivers, making it more critical than ever that existing resources are directed toward patient care rather than excessive executive compensation.

The Healthcare Executive Compensation Act seeks to close the widening gap between excessive executive pay and the realities faced by patients and frontline healthcare workers. The proposed measure would limit total annual compensation for executives, administrators, and managers at nonprofit and for-profit hospitals and medical groups to $450,000 per year.

Healthcare workers are continuing to collect signatures across California in the coming months as they move toward qualifying the initiative for the November 2026 ballot.

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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.