Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes public comment. So thank you, Herb, for public comment. We are going to move on to the rest of the agenda. We have item 14/1.
Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Allen, Councilman in the House of Vice Mayor Richardson, recommendation to request city attorney to prepare a resolution to communicate the city's full support of Molina health care to continue providing health care to Medicaid recipients in the county of Los Angeles as the primary contracted commercial plan.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Amir Molina. Health care is a major employer here in downtown, with 2500 total employees and more than a thousand of these employees and their families are living in Long Beach. The job that many health care providers here are good paying jobs and they have a huge economic impact. And these jobs support thousands of additional jobs, both directly and indirectly. Most of you know that. But the company was founded here in Long Beach and is still headquartered here today. And having their headquarters here is valuable to our city and having their employees here is valuable to our city. The company is also a good corporate partner. One thing that they did recently was during COVID, they help train volunteers to support our community during COVID 19. I strongly believe that our city should be supporting their state application. It's an important way to use our voice that will benefit our community. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilmember Allen, for this item. Very, very happy to be able to support this item. As you all know, the COVID pandemic cast for many changes from everyone and for very quick response from our city and from our partners. I'm so grateful for the support Molina Healthcare was able to provide during this time by providing PPE donations and offering volunteer support to our community based organizations in particularly. I love that they were able to help with their outreach efforts in our hard to reach population and that's their specialty and I'm so honored to have them here in Long Beach and I just want continuous. I want to be able to continuously support them as they support our communities that need them the most. Thank you. Happy to support this item.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And basically, Richardson.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen, Councilman and de Haas for bringing this forward. Happy to sign on and support. It makes a lot of sense for Long Beach. You know, it's anchored here. It's based here. My colleagues made a strong case and we have a, you know, a pulpit here as Long Beach. And we should weigh in if, you know, if they continue to provide services. That's the jobs that remain here in Long Beach. And that's always a good thing. So I'm happy to sign on support. And I think we should certainly prepare a resolution or express a letter or whatever we need to do to make it really clear whether they were Long Beach fans. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. I'll do a public comment. If I can have the speakers, please line up to the to the microphone. Cameron Smith, Eartha Knowles, Adrianna Baumann, Ryan Reif, Noelle Lara. And so I can say in that order, Cameron Smith, Eartha Knowles, Adriana Berman, Ryan Reif, Noelle, Laura. And can I confirm, please? Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. I appreciate the opportunity to see everybody in person as well and to just voice our support for the resolution, as Councilmember Allen alluded to. You know, Molina is homegrown Long Beach Company, like I said, with over a thousand employees based here in the city, along with another 1500 working at our corporate offices. And this is the first time in over a decade that the state is moving forward with the rebid process of the the Medi-Cal program throughout the state. And that's why is the first time you're seeing us here asking for a resolution, because it's the first time the state has moved forward in many years. So we have a number of employees here that also want to express their appreciation and support for the motion. And I'm certainly happy to stand by if there are any questions that the council may have. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Good evening. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Perfect. Good evening. My name is Eartha Knowles. Mr. Mayor, a council members. And my comments are from item item 14 on the agenda. In August of 2000, I decided to work formally in a health care because it was established back in 1981 by a Long Beach family. They kept the business in Long Beach, which I call my home. Besides having a steady paycheck, which is always a good thing, I stayed with Marlene and not only because it is a good company to work with or to work for. I really like how Milena supports the community through the Helping Hands Volunteer Program. I believe that council members and Dais mentioned that in her speech. But I remember for me personally, there were many weekends sorting through pallets of book donations for Long Beach schools, serving holiday meals at the local churches, shelters passing out toys to the neighborhood kids. Given that the first, very first backpack filled with school supplies on the first day of school. Monitoring intersections as retired vets proudly paraded down Long Beach streets, displaying their stripes on their once crisp uniforms, meeting with our coworkers, doing beach cleanups. And then. Now I'm speaking before city council member. Hey, check that out. I have watched Melina grow and expand over the years. And through it all, even in a pandemic reality, Melina has stayed true to the mission of providing quality health services to financially vulnerable families and individuals covered by government programs. It is city officials like you, thank you said, who has supported Melina through the years so that Long Beach can remain home to Melina corporate office. So thank you. City of Long Beach for your continued support. And thank you for this opportunity to speak before you on this item. Have a good evening. Good evening. Thank you, city council for the opportunity to be here tonight. It's really nice to see you all in one room. My name is Adrian Environment. I'm the community engagement manager at Molina Health Care, and I'm a proud Long Beach resident. I've been working for health care for 27 years. I have the privilege to work alongside with our founder, Dr. David Molina. I seen the company start with just a handful of clinics. Small clinics born here in this beautiful city of Long Beach now has grown throughout 18 states, coast to coast. Carrying the same values, the same mission and vision that we started over four decades ago, which is. Serving the underserved and providing health care to the. To the disadvantage family. I'm very lucky to have one of the best jobs I Milena, and that is to serve the community in my own backyard. Our job goes beyond health care. We work with schools. We work with community based agencies. Churches. I might be assisting families obtaining health care coverage. I could be delivering blankets, food, clothing at local shelters. You might see me at community events providing families with health, education and resources. I'm really proud to represent a company here in Long Beach. Molina has been committed to the city of Long Beach for many, many years. And with your support. We'd like to continue to. I'm sorry. I'm really nervous. Really great. Thank you. Thank you. We want to continue to provide health care and community services for all Angelinos. So I want to thank you tonight for your support for your time. Well, Molina, that's a home grown business in Long Beach. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Right.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Counsel, for the opportunity to speak with you today on the Agenda Item 14 resolution to keep me as a commercial payer in Los Angeles. My name is Ryan Reiser, director of health care at Director of Health Clinic Quality Improvement. A little bit about what I love about my job is day to day. I get to use data analytics to identify at risk populations that to be targeted for various interventions to help improve their health outcomes. Six years ago I was still in Minnesota, but a friend of mine was working on Lean and he shared with me the vision that Melina had and the work that he was doing. It was this inspiration that caused me to move all the way out here. I mean, also, the weather helped, too. And over the last six years, it's been nothing but inspired from the work of the city itself. The growth had overtaken over the last six years of growth for Molina and the way that we've been able to expand our outreach and the way that we are impact members and improve their lives. It is through this work too that I've been inspired not to settle down and run some routes. A homeowner now in Long Beach and now also to I've been elected to serve as chairman and board of a local nonprofit here in Long Beach Dreams and the into goals looking into helping kids get better educational outcomes as well. And so it just really it's mission. Leanna was really the inspiration that brought me here, but it was really the city of Long Beach that kept me here and really appreciate the council's support on this measure. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 2: Hi. My name's Laura. I would like to express my appreciation. And I need to be here and express my gratitude. I first moved to London in 2003. I am a graduate from California State University Army Beach. I'm willing to health care. I'm a quality manager. I mostly support the western regions that health care operates in. So California is one of the states. And my department performance data and measurement. We try to predict the future and stay ahead of chronic illnesses across traditionally underserved populations. Our success in health care is largely determined how we help the community and the interventions that we come up with. A lot of what we develop here locally in Long Beach, in California specifically oftentimes get embedded into other state health plan operations. So for me, it's particularly meaningful work and where we impact the health outcomes of up to hundreds of thousands of our members. Growing up. My grandmother and mother steered us towards the public service sector. So a lot of clinicians, a lot of law enforcement on my mother's side. So naturally we were steered certain career path. So for this reason, it's really exciting to continue to showcase our best practices. And help improve the health outcomes of populations across the nation. Ultimately, I'm very full of gratitude and I thank you for the opportunity. Again, thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Speaker.
Speaker 2: So I can't say. Sixth District Resident There's always these ample opportunities to prove that I have no political aspirations. Molina Health care is providing another opportunity. Speaking as a shareholder of Molina, Healthcare had the opportunity to buy in about a year ago at $132 a share and now sits at $281. I think I'm doing pretty good. That said, you know, our governor here has an opportunity with this medical re hall to eliminate a lot of structural inequities that exist with Medicare. And going into one of those structural, inadequate and inadequate inadequacies is a ghost network. You know, of course, networks are providers, lists and networks of you know, usually it depends on what sector of health you're having an issue with. But in this example, we'll use mental health. So you have ghost networks where the providers with that are kind of an accurate. Our friends. Money and health care have been they've had some inaccuracies. There's actually a sitting case with the city attorney of San Diego right now with relation to the inaccuracies provided to some of our low income and people of color, patients who aren't getting the full service that they need provided by money in health care. Upwards to the 80 percentile rate. That's actually one of the reasons why Governor Newsom is, you know, so actually trying to combat some of these issues. Speaking both as a shareholder and as a private resident here in the city of Long Beach, it's a little bit alarming for the city to connect itself with these kinds of managed care professionals who are having, you know, multiple violations with relation to these kinds of things as they have a book reader and big on consumer protections unsafe and at any speed by Mr. Ralph Nader is an all time favorite of mine. And I think that as a city council and as our mayor, we have to be really mindful and what we choose to support. I'm sure the vote has already been figured out, but with respect to the public, we have to be mindful of the fact that although, yes, I'm a big advocate of local hire and I'm a big advocate of the positive response and impact that Molina Healthcare has provided in the workplace. We do have to be mindful that, you know, care is preeminent in terms of what's important and how we represent our city and who we partner with and things like this. So.
Speaker 0: Thank you. There is a there's emotionally second on the resolution recommendation that's in front of the council members was going to cast your vote.
Speaker 1: Motion is carried.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is going to be item number 15. Do you want to as we go to item 15, I do want to thank the the all the employees from Molina that that came out. And they're also part of our greater Long Beach community. So just appreciate all of you for for being involved in that. And obviously, one of the larger institutions that we have in the city, either on the public or private side, and certainly you can get engaged in all the volunteer work they're all doing.
Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution to communicate to the State of California Department of Healthcare Services the City’s full support of Molina Healthcare of California’s (MHC) bid to continue providing healthcare to Medi-Cal recipients in the County of Los Angeles as the Primary Contracted Commercial Plan.