Jennifer Reifel, M.D.

This information is for archival purposes only.

Dr. Jennifer Reifel is chief resident in medicine at UCLA and a fellow in hematology and oncology. Her activism in health care issues developed in medical school out of moral indignation at the discrepancies in medical treatments offered to patients with the same medical conditions depending on where they were hospitalized -- county, university, or affluent community hospital. She is president of the Los Angeles chapter of Neighbor to Neighbor, a grassroots organization working for health care reform, and the co-chair of the California Physicians Alliance, the state chapter of Physcians for a National Health Program. The California Physicians Alliance, along with Neighbor to Neighbor and a coalition of consumer and health care provider organizations, has sponsored two California ballot initiatives on health care reform. Dr. Reifel was a leading spokesperson for both of these initiatives, Proposition 186, which would have established a singlepayer health care system in California, and Proposition 214, which sought to ban some of the conflicts of interests imposed by managed care on the doctor-patient relationship, such as gag-clauses and bonuses for denying care.