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 am 72 years old, receiving SSB as my sole source of income. Starting June 2018, I will be receiving Medicare benefits, in addition to basic Medical coverage. Your website provided me with all the necessary information I needed, in order to understand how Medicare-Medical work together to maximize my benefits. Thank you so much...!!!"

“The CHA Fact Sheets are invaluable; I do not know what we would do without them! It would be impossible to counsel and reach the population that we do, if the fact sheets were not available. They provide us with a template in which we base all our sessions on, and with them, we can confidently say to the client that we are providing them with accurate and detailed information, which will guide them into making a decision that is appropriate for them. They are the best thing next to sliced bread!”

— Jennifer Tam, San Francisco HICAP Program Manager

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

“Thank you so much for the technical assistance provided by Bonnie Burns to our HICAP counselor during February and March of 2011. Our client had trouble with a long term care policy that was refusing to pay. With Mrs. Burns’ help, our counselor was able to have the client’s policy begin paying for her long term care at a benefit level of $100/day. With HICAP’s help, the client will be able to save an estimated $118,381 over 3 years! The client’s family is very happy and appreciative of our help”

— Tatiana FassieuxProgram Manager, Butte County HICAP – a program of PASSAGES

“We consider the CHA Fact Sheets a staple, not only of of our service delivery, but also of our new-counselor training. The Fact Sheets are well-written, clear and complete, and a very helpful tool when explaining Medicare's complex features to beneficiaries. The CHA Fact Sheets are updated in a timely manner, too, making their website the go-to-resource for accurate information.”

— Margaret ReillyProgram Manager, HICAP Services of Northern California, West Sacramento

“We use the CHA fact sheets as our working reference material. There isn't a day that goes by when we don't refer to a fact sheet and give pertinent ones to our clients. They are a godsend for our program.”