About Us

About California Health Advocates

Founded in 1997, California Health Advocates is the leading Medicare advocacy and education non-profit in California. We receive financial support from private and public organizations. See our grantors and sponsors, meet our staff, read articles mentioning CHA, or read about our first 10 years. Our work includes:

Advocacy & Policy

Advocacy: Advocating on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries and their families, we target federal and state level legislators and their staff through media and educational campaigns. We also build and lead coalitions of strategic partners concerned with Medicare-related issues, such as the California Medicare Coalition.

Policy: As the premiere watchdog organization for Medicare in California, we conduct public policy research to support improved rights and protections of Medicare beneficiaries and their families. We frequently partner with other statewide and national Medicare organizations to promote policies that positively impact Medicare.

See our Press Releases and Press Mentions.

Education

We provide accurate and up-to-date Medicare information for both Medicare beneficiaries and their families — and the, advocates and providers who serve them.

For California beneficiaries and their families: Our website provides Medicare information organized by topic, with English and Spanish podcasts available in several sections. We also support the state’s Health Insurance Counseling & Advocacy Program (HICAP) who work directly one-on-one with California’s Medicare population through our trainings, technical assistance and educational materials.

For Medicare professionals: We provide current Medicare information and education through this website, our e-newsletter, blog articles, policy briefs and our widely-used fact sheets concerning the Medicare’s most pressing issues, all available in the For Professionals section of our website. Our expert staff trainers also provide educational workshops, training and consultation to professionals, including HICAP counselors and staff on comprehensive Medicare topics and policy issues.

Contact Us

Learn about the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) project and how SMP counselors can help you resolve fraud related questions and provide education on Medicare fraud prevention.

Send Us Your Comments

Do you have comments or concerns about your Medicare coverage? Issues regarding getting your needed prescriptions from your Part D plan, or a Medicare Advantage plan representative’s marketing practices? Let us know at comments@cahealthadvocates.org.

Hearing how Medicare is working for you is an important part of our advocacy efforts to make sure Medicare works well for all beneficiaries. Your comments help guide our recommendations with key state and national policy makers.

Contributing to Our Work

We seek tax-deductible contributions and sponsors to support our high quality educational events and publications. We are a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity, and donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

We’re listed with GuideStar. You may donate online or send a donation to:

California Health Advocates
5380 Elvas Avenue, Suite 221
Sacramento CA 95819

Read Our Testimonials:

"I wish to take this opportunity to express a heartfelt thank you for your fine work through your office and Pam Brown's that enabled me to retrieve my Medicare insurance that was inadvertently canceled may my insurer in error. Just received my medical card today. We are so relieved. A lovely lady with Medicare gave me the HICAP number and through another very nice lady (Muriel Smalheiser) I was able to speak with Pam who contacted you at California Health Advocates. I am so grateful to all of you, as my wife who is very ill battling a rare cancer, as sick as she was, tried to assist me in my application during the open conversion period, would have been disastrous for me not to have coverage. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your caring and your fine work."

-- Phil R.

California Health Advocates (CHA) is an invaluable resource for our Contra Costa HICAP (SHIP) program. This organization supports HICAP statewide in numerous ways. We have used CHA for training new volunteer counselors, for providing our first-line resource materials primarily through their fantastic fact sheets, and for very important technical research as they look up applicable federal governmental regulations about very complicated matters. This latter service is greatly appreciated because those of us who work in the field are dealing with the immediate needs of clients and don’t have the time to pore through government regulations.

— Ruth AtkinHICAP Program Manager, Contra Costa County

“The CHA fact sheets are an invaluable tool for our HICAP in terms of training both new and experienced volunteers and staff, including agency staff from other programs, on a variety of topics related to Medicare and long-term care insurance. We also utilize these fact sheets when providing in-service trainings to other agencies and providers serving older adults and people with disabilities. In addition, our counselors rely on them when providing one-on-one counseling to Medicare beneficiaries or to persons who hold or are interested in long-term care insurance policies. Counselors use the fact sheets to help beneficiaries understand their options in specific circumstances, such as those who may be eligible for limited income programs, veterans, and/or those who are still working and have other coverage. In a typical year, we can approximate that we use somewhere between 10,000-20,000 of the CHA fact sheets. These fact sheets are usually the first materials to be updated when there are changes that need to be made and they are absolutely critical in helping our HICAP to fulfill our mission of educating and providing advocacy to Medicare beneficiaries. Many thanks for all that you do!”

— Debbie ReedHICAP Program Manager, Santa Cruz/San Benito Counties

“Thank you for providing an outstanding training to our counselors and staff on Medicare fraud and abuse. Your stories and discussion on what’s happening out there in the world of crimes against Medicare really opened our counselors’ eyes to what is happening in our own backyard and gave them a greater appreciation for the amazing work being done by the Senior Medicare Patrol!”

— Debbie Reed,Santa Cruz County HICAP Program Manager

“Your website is a breath of fresh air...It is very well organized, written, and very helpful. It is also pleasing to the eye when navigating through it. You organized a complicated set of information which the readers can sift through easily and learn. Thank you so much for the wonderful website.”

— Cozet C.Clinical Pharmacist Consultant

“Thank you for listening to me…. I will always be grateful that you cared and also that you have helped a lot of other people when you worked so hard to change the injustice that was done to a lot of our seniors.”

— Sharon