Assembly Passes Bill To Cover Medi-Cal Program Shortfall - Goes to Governor For Approval

The Assembly passed this morning (7/3) emergency legislation (AB 1746) that will cover the shortfall in this year's Medi-Cal Program budget, passed by a bi-partisan vote of 61-3.  The measure passed the Senate MOnday (June 30) by a vote of 27-1.  The bill now heads to the Governor, where approval is certain.

The bill which appropriates $727,225,000 from the State's General Fund (nearly all for the Medi-Cal program).

Assembly Budget Committee Chair Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) said "this bill will provide $725 million  to Deparmtnet of Health services to reimburse providers. This is a necessary measure."

Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine) said on the floor that "this is a deficiency bill for Medi-Cal, tehre is nothing we can do about these costs now. These are relative to caseload. Most of these items are truly eligible for deficiency, and I ask for an aye vote."

Republicans Aghazarian, Bates, Benoit, Bogh, Campbell, Cogdill, Cox, Daucher, Harman, Horton, Maddox, Maze, McCarthy, Nakanishi, Richman, Runner, Spitzer vote for the bill.  Republicans Haynes, La Suer and Mountjoy opposed it (Mountjoy opposed due to inclusion of funding for Medi-Cal abortions).

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN
* The Medi-Cal program budget for 2002-2003 (the fiscal year that ends tonight)
overspent its budget by over $700,000,000. Most Medi-Cal providers cannot be paid
for services which have already been rendered to Medi-Cal recipients - who
include people with developmental and other disabilities, seniors and others,
because there was not enough funds budgeted for this year.  The bill - AB 1746,
corrects that problem by adding more state General Fund dollars to the Medi-Cal
program to cover the shortfall. Similar pieces of legislation have passed for
other programs in other departments where overspending of budgets occurred.
* Passage of this bill - critically important to most Medi-Cal providers,
including nursing home facilities, intermediate care facilities for the
developmentally disabled, etc still needs approval by the Governor, which is certan. The bill is an "urgency" or emergency bill and will go into effect immediately and will mean that these Medi-Cal providers will be paid for all services performed up to and including June 30, 2003.
* While this action has impact on the proposed budget 2003-2004, it is not
directly linked to that budget proposal.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS REPORT
* This is a report  for Californians with developmental (& other disabilities), families, providers and other advocates, from the California Coalition of United Cerebral Palsy Associations, a link to the California Community Advocacy Network.
* If you would like to get on this distribution (and conversely, get off of it) please send an email with that request to:   martyomoto@rcip.com.  Sharing information is part of our organizing effort. Please feel free to forward or copy this (attribution is nice). We're all in this together!
Marty Omoto, advocate/brother of Alana, sister with developmental disabilities
CA Coalition of United Cerebral Palsy Associations
1225 8th Street Suite 480 Sacramento, CA 95814  916/446-0013 (NEW phone number!)
NEW fax number: 916/446-0026        email: martyomoto@rcip.com
Coalition Chair: Philip Ksarjian (UCP of Greater Sacramento)
Past Chair: Ron Cohen (UCP of LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties)