Senator Feinstein Urges Governor Schwarzenegger to Reconsider Health Care Budget Cuts

Senator Feinstein Urges Governor Schwarzenegger to Reconsider Health Care Budget Cuts

San Francisco - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today expressed deep concern about budget cuts proposed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to California 's Healthy Families and Med-Cal programs which will hurt the State's poorest families and lose millions of dollars in matching federal funds. The following is the text of a letter sent today to Governor Schwarzenegger:

"I am writing to express my deep concern about the proposed enrollment caps in the Healthy Families and Medi-Cal
programs in your fiscal year 2004-2005 budget, released last week.

While I recognize that bringing California's budget into balance may require slower growth in certain programs, I believe that capping enrollment for vital safety-net health programs for hundreds of thousands of California's poorest adults and children is 'penny wise,' but 'pound foolish.'

The result of capping enrollment of federal-state matching programs such as Healthy Families and Medi-Cal will mean hundreds of thousands of additional Californians will now be ineligible for health benefits.

In addition, the loss of federal funds by capping enrollment in Healthy Families and Medi-Cal will be significant. California will lose approximately one dollar of federal funds for every dollar cut from the Medi-Cal program. For every dollar reduction in state funds for Healthy Families, California loses approximately two dollars in matching federal funds.

In fact, the California Budget Project predicts that California stands to lose approximately $63 million in federal dollars as a result of capping enrollment in the Healthy Families Program in 2004-2005.

Of particular note is the success of the Healthy Families program in covering children in families that do not qualify for Medi-Cal.

The Healthy Families program covers more than 600,000 children in California, offering a benefits package including routine health care such as well-baby and well-child services with immunizations, as well as medically necessary hospitalization; occupational, physical and speech therapies; and laboratory and x-ray services.

At a time when obtaining employer-based family health care coverage is becoming less of a reality for many families, government should be doing what it can to increase enrollment in public health care programs such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.

As of November 2003, California had approximately 1.5 million uninsured children and the State ranks 45 th in the nation in the number of uninsured children. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that children lacking health insurance are seven times more likely to go without the medical care they need and are twenty-five percent more likely to miss school than insured children.

For children, lack of access to primary and preventive care has been associated with high rates of "avoidable hospitalizations," those that would not have occurred if they had received effective, timely and continuous ambulatory care for certain chronic conditions, such as asthma.

Access to childhood vaccinations through the Healthy Families Program is essential. Before vaccines, many children died from diseases that vaccines now prevent, such as whooping cough, measles, and polio.

A cap on enrollment of these programs may increase revenue to the State's General Fund in the short-term but it will leave hundreds of thousands of California's adults and children without access to essential health care from routine doctor's visits to emergency medical attention.

The long-term effects will be devastating to the health of California 's sickest and most needy adults and children. In addition to placing greater strain on California 's emergency rooms by creating greater numbers of uninsured, California will be virtually throwing away matching federal dollars that could be used to strengthen both programs and forgo future budget cuts.

Thank you for your consideration of my concerns. I look forward to hearing from you on how we can work together to maintain and strengthen California 's public health care safety net."