JennyKattlove's blog

After months of stalemate, a state budget is finally in place. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, the significant cuts to children's health care in the 2008-09 budget will reverse a decade of progress in covering our state's children and cause much costlier problems down the road.

On Tuesday morning, the California Legislature approved a budget for fiscal year 2008-09 that reverses years of progress in covering children by including provisions that will result in nearly 300,000 children being dropped from health coverage – increasing the number of uninsured children in California by almost 40 percent.

This week, the plight of children’s health in this year’s state budget garnered front page media attention.

Take Five Minutes to Tell Your Legislators not to Cut Children’s Health!

Behind closed doors, the Big 5 – our four legislative leaders and Governor Schwarzenegger – are working to finalize California’s budget. Among the key items for debate remains the Semi-Annual Reporting proposal for children enrolled in Medi-Cal.

Last Friday, Governor Schwarzenegger released a proposal for Phase 1 of “Health Care Reform” in California [visit the (temporary) website http://opr.ca.gov/temp/ for details of the plan]. Disappointingly, this first phase of health care reform omits any policy that would expand health coverage to children.

Last night, California’s Budget Conference Committee voted to support a proposal that would drop a quarter million children from health coverage by requiring children to renew their Medi-Cal coverage every six months. This proposal is called Semi-Annual Reporting.

DECISIONS ABOUT CHILDREN’S HEALTH BEING MADE NOW: The most critical California state budget item for children’s health may be decided as early as this Thursday.