The California Budget Goes to Court

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Dayen
d-day

There's a confluence of high-profile lawsuits against the state today, on big topics with far-reaching consequences. First, the medical community is suing over Medi-Cal payments:

“Doctors, hospitals and health care providers filed a class-action lawsuit Monday seeking to block the state from cutting payments to them for treating the poor.

“The lawsuit argues that an upcoming 10 percent rate cut to Medi-Cal -- the state-run health insurance program serving 6.5 million low-income residents -- will exacerbate a shortage of doctors, dentists and pharmacists willing to treat poor patients because payments are so low.

"Medi-Cal already doesn't cover the cost of providing care," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Association, which led the lawsuit. "If these cuts take effect, Medi-Cal patients will be forced to seek care in already overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, which undermines access to care for all Californians."

“The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, seeks an immediate injunction to block the reduction from taking effect July 1.”

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has been at the forefront of criticizing these payment cuts, and when he talked to bloggers at the CDP convention he predicted this lawsuit would be successful. The future of emergency room care and Medi-Cal really hangs in the balance: if the payments are inadequate, hospitals and doctors might turn these patients away, straining the ER system and increasing the crisis in health care access.

In a separate lawsuit, a taxpayer group is suing to block $12 billion in prison construction bonds:

“Even though the state is facing a $20 billion dollar deficit and our high schools, colleges, universities, health care facilities, and food banks alike are threatened with billions of dollars of reduced funding, the Governor and our Legislative leaders want to build 53,000 new prison and jail beds. We already have 170,000 prisoners in California. We don't need more prison beds -- we need sentencing reform and better support in the community for recovering drug addicts, people with mental illness, and parolees.