No state legislator has done more than Scott Wiener to advance mental health parity, so when Kaiser Permanente therapists Lisa Whelan and Faith Tobias learned that Wiener is running to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress, they volunteered to knock on doors in San Francisco.
“I really like Scott Wiener as a candidate, and he’s certainly been really supportive of our union,” said Whelan, who had never before volunteered in support of a political campaign. “I’m very troubled by what’s happening in the country, and I feel like I need to take action to help move things in the right direction.”
While Wiener gets the most headlines for advancing LGBTQ+ rights and standing up to the Trump Administration, his work with NUHW to improve access to health care, especially mental healthcare, often goes unnoticed.
In 2021, Wiener authored SB 221, a law sponsored by NUHW, that requires health plans, including Kaiser, to provide medically necessary mental health therapy appointments within two weeks of the prior appointment.
The next year, Wiener and NUHW collaborated on a law that increased penalties tenfold on health plans that violated patient access laws. It was the first increase in fines in five decades.
Wiener also shepherded an NUHW-backed bill into law that requires California to keep doing the administrative legwork to move towards Medicare for All, so it can be ready when there is a federal administration that is receptive to states initiating major healthcare reforms.
Whelan, who works with patients enduring chronic pain, said SB 221, which went into effect shortly before workers held a 10-week strike in 2022, had an immediate impact, but that Kaiser has since made it harder for therapists to get patients seen within the two-week required window.
“The law is important, but how it’s implemented at Kaiser is really messed up,” Whelan said. “They don’t want to hire more clinicians, and that’s what it will take to provide really good care.”
As is always the case in San Francisco, the congressional election will be hotly contested with Wiener facing off against Supervisor Connie Chan and software engineer Saikat Chakrabarti.
After protesters interrupted Wiener’s kick-off campaign, calling on him not to take money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, Wiener recently clarified his views on Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
In a five-minute video, Wiener announced that he wouldn’t take AIPAC money, decried the destruction of Gaza, and acknowledged that Israeli government-sanctioned settler violence has “inflicted permanent trauma on the Palestinian people.” In a follow-up 90-second video, he said for the first time that he believes Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
The Middle East didn’t come up when Whelan and Tobias went door to door with an NUHW organizer in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood.
“Nearly everyone we talked to was supportive,” Whelan said. “It was a little bit stressful at first, but the people who answered the door were happy to talk about the race. It was a good experience.”
