Kaiser Permanente says it is eliminating 1,850 jobs in California as the Oakland health care giant faces a drop in subscribers and shrinking reimbursements from Medicare.
Kaiser spokesman Marc Brown says the cuts will mainly hit housekeepers, secretaries, business office employees and pharmacy and information-management clerks -- mostly in Northern California.
Kaiser announced the cuts Tuesday, a week after reporting a 75 percent jump in second-quarter profits to $620 million. Income from day-to-day operations, however, fell 18 percent.
The company says it lost 36,000 subscribers in the first half of the year, leaving about 8.6 million.
Economists say laid-off employees in other industries losing their employer-paid health insurance were a major cause of Kaiser's subscriber losses.
