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Davis' scheme draws fire Although widely criticized by health care advocates as a cynical approach to budgeting, Davis wants families enrolled in the Medi-Cal program to document their address and income four times a year. Currently Medi-Cal parents are required to report to the state annually and recently approved legislation would increase that obligation to twice a year. But Davis' plan, released last week as part of his revised budget, is to make eligibility reports a quarterly requirement. Analysts estimate that if approved, as many as 200,000 of the more than 1 million parents in the Medi-Cal program will fail to file their paperwork on time and thus lose their benefits over a two-year period. If so, the state would save as much as $40 million a year. "The vast majority of the people who will lose their benefits would otherwise be eligible," said David Carroll of the California Budget Project, a liberal-leaning research group based in Sacramento. "And those people will still get sick and be forced to seek care at emergency rooms and clinics that are not going to get reimbursed for their services." The California Medical Association reported that the state's emergency rooms are already losing huge sums -- $390 million in 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available. This proposal, said medical association spokeswoman Heather Campbell, will only cause more red ink. State health officials defend the plan, saying they are only trying to eliminate people who are no longer eligible. They point out that there are new reporting forms that are much easier to use and should not pose a barrier to care. "The advocacy community may be responding to how the program was run in the past," said Diana Bonta, director of the California Department of Health Services. "The reporting requirements then were much more cumbersome. It was several pages to fill out. This time it is much easier." Medi-Cal, the state's version of the Medicaid program, serves more than 6.5 million low-income families, children and disabled residents. Jointly funded by the state and the federal government, the program will cost the state about $10 billion this year -- an expense that has increased an average of 10 percent per year. Administration officials have said that tough choices need to be made to resolve the state's budget deficit, which has grown to more than $38 billion. They also point out that the governor's revised budget would impose far fewer cuts in public health than the spending plan Davis first offered in January. Bonta noted that, while parents may be required to report more frequently to the state, their children will not. And even if parents do lose their benefits, children will be protected. But children will suffer when parents lose benefits, said Kristen Testa, spokeswoman for the 100 Percent Campaign, a children's health group based in San Francisco. She argues that many parents will not understand that their children are still covered when the adults have been kicked out of the program. "There's the rules on the books and then there's the reality of what will happen," she said.
Davis' plan must be approved by the Legislature to become law and thus far lawmakers have been reluctant to consider the governor's idea.
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