Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kaiser Permanente was founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield. It was created to provide medical services at Kaiser's shipyards, steel mills, and other facilities before opening to the general public.
Kaiser Permanente is headquartered in Oakland, California. As of 2024, it serves eight states, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia.
Kaiser Permanente took its current name in 1951 when Henry Kaiser unilaterally directed the trustees of the health plans, hospitals, and medical groups to add his own name ahead of Permanente. Physicians in the Permanente Medical Group resented the implication that Kaiser directly controlled their work and forced him to back off with respect to their part of the organization.
The October 2023 Kaiser Permanente strike involved roughly 75,000 workers represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, walking out from the 4th to the 7th of October 2023 over staffing shortages and wages. It has been called the largest health care worker strike in U.S. history, and it ended with a tentative agreement on the 13th of October 2023 that set minimum hourly wages of $25 in California and $23 in other states.
Kaiser Permanente was fined nearly $500,000 by California's occupational safety regulator early in the COVID-19 pandemic, after being cited twelve times for violations. Kaiser San Leandro alone accounted for close to $90,000 of those fines, largely for delays in reporting COVID-19 infections.
Kaiser Permanente has been criticized because its cash reserves run far above what state regulators require. As of 2015 it held $21.7 billion in reserves, about 1,600 percent of the minimum required under California regulations, a figure critics such as Jamie Court of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights have cited as evidence that Kaiser's policies are overpriced.