Governor Signs CA State Budget; Eliminates Healthy Families Program
By Sue Dormanen.
The Budget eliminates the Healthy Families Program, transferring beneficiaries to Medi‐Cal over a 12‐month period beginning in January 2013. Overall, the plan cuts more than $1 billion from health related programs to pare down a $15.7 billion deficit, California Healthline reports.
Democratic leaders agreed to Brown’s request to phase in a two-year time limit for new welfare recipients to find work under the state’s welfare-to-work program known as CalWORKS, and also agreed to eliminate Healthy Families, a children’s health insurance program for low-income working families, by slowly moving 880,000 children into Medi-Cal.
The spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 assumes voters will approve Brown’s tax hike on the November ballot. If voters reject that tax initiative, a series of automatic cuts will be triggered, including three weeks less of public school for the next two years.
Brown believes the tax initiative will raise $8.5 billion in the new fiscal year starting July 1 by increasing the sales tax by a quarter cent to 7.5 percent for four years, and boosting the income tax on people who make more than $250,000 a year for seven years.
Read more from California Healthline.
The budget is available at:
http://www.dof.ca.gov
The California Consortium for Urban Indian Health is pleased to work with The California Endowment to raise public awareness about the importance of prevention through the “Health Happens with Prevention” campaign.