Kaiser doesn't have a "bottom line" to support. North and South Kaiser are two completely different orgs, but they both use the same EHR technology and can move records between them with no real friction.
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.
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).