Community Clinics and Public Health Under Threat from California Budget 

A broad range of local elected officials and organizations including Health Access, the Health Officers Association of California, Western Center on Law and Poverty, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network and the California Immigrant Policy Center have joined forces to try and protect the state’s health-care safety net and prevention programs from crippling budget cuts proposed by the governor’s office. We stand with them.

At a time when California is working to implement healthcare reform and cover the uninsured, the administration’s budget proposal would cut $2.5 billion over the next three years from local public health departments and healthcare services for those with the greatest need.

The cuts would reinforce the inequities of the health system and are likely to reduce support for proven public health and prevention efforts like an Alameda County program that helps keep children with asthma out of the hospital. They would weaken the network of safety-net clinics that will need to continue providing care to 3 to 4 million Californians likely to remain uninsured.

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS AND STAND UP FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH.

Editorial boards from the San Jose Mercury News to the Sacramento Bee to the Los Angeles Times have weighed in strongly against the administration’s proposal.

Here’s what two county health leaders had to say about the impact of these cuts:

”Our safety-net programs are already bursting at the seams.” –Alex Briscoe, director of healthcare services for Alameda County, in Forbes.com.

These cuts may have “disastrous results.” –Cynthia Harding, deputy director of the Los Angeles Department of Public Health.

This is no time to undermine local public health programs or take money from approaches that have been proven to keep people healthy and safe.

Please click here to contact your state Senator and Representative. Please also call Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (916) 651-4006) and Assembly Speaker John Perez (916-319-2053) today and tell them to protect funding for local public health in the budget process.