[sprucely]

They may not have a bottom line, but they certainly put up barriers to accessing specialty care that I never experienced when using the Sutter/Blue Shield combo. Also this wasn't a North Kaiser vs South Kaiser thing. More like Solano vs Yolo/Sacramento counties.

[dekhn]

Kaiser doesn't excel at specialty care, I will agree with that. There's more friction (and inter-regionally, which is not something I've had to deal with since I'm in the bay area which is the kaiser mothership).

Kaiser exists to maximize healthcare for reasonable costs across a wide range of people, and they do so by keeping general health high, but at the expense of specialty. In a city like SF, that means Kaiser will send you to UCSF for a transplant and pay a significant fraction. In Solano and Yolo/Sacramento there are far fewer specialists and even then I'd expect you to be referred to UCSF (when I worked there, there were constantly people visiting from all over the state for transplants).