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
