If a ballot measure seeking money for children’s hospitals seems
familiar to California voters, it’s because they approved a nearly
identical measure in 2004.
SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER – Associated Press
LOS ANGELES
If a ballot measure seeking money for children’s hospitals seems familiar to California voters, it’s because they approved a nearly identical measure in 2004.
Proposition 3 on the Nov. 4 ballot would authorize the state to borrow $980 million to pay for construction, remodeling and equipping children’s hospitals. The measure would cost the state about $1.9 billion over 30 years, money that would have to come from the deficit-ridden general fund.
In 2004, a similar measure was approved by about 57 percent of voters. It authorized $750 million in bonds, which will cost the state about $1.5 billion to repay.
“We’re back again four years later because the pressure on the system is more intense and the needs are higher,” said Diana Dooley, president and chief executive of the California Children’s Hospital Association.
The crush of children seeking treatment for cancer, heart defects and other serious illnesses will overwhelm hospitals without expansion of facilities, Dooley said. Hospital budgets have grown tighter since the election four years ago, and construction costs have skyrocketed, said Dr. Stuart E. Siegel, who heads the oncology and hematology center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
Nearly 95 percent of cancer patients in Siegel’s ward are treated on an outpatient basis. When they need to be admitted for care, he said it can be tough to find a bed.
“Right now, in California, there are times during the year when it is impossible to find a bed in a children’s hospital if a child needs it,” Siegel said. “We have no margin at all; we’re at the limit.”
In the event of a statewide medical emergency, such as an epidemic, state hospitals would have “absolutely zero capacity for addressing that sudden increase in need,” Siegel said.
About 75 percent of patients at Childrens Hospital qualify for Medi-Cal, but the federal health benefits program rarely covers the full cost of care.
The care for those without insurance also falls to hospitals. Uninsured patients are more likely to avoid the hospital until they can no longer avoid seeking care, often requiring more costly treatment for advanced ailments.
According to U.S. Census Bureau figures from August, the number of Californians who find themselves without health coverage rose last year to 18.6 percent, making the state’s residents more likely to be uninsured than those in all but six states.
The rise in operating costs has sopped up the extra money raised through philanthropy that, in years past, would have gone toward expansions, Dooley said.
She concedes Proposition 3 isn’t a total fix for the state’s ailing health care system because it “doesn’t address the shortage of professionals, but it does address the physical capacity that we need.”
Under the proposition, 80 percent of funding would go to hospitals that focus on children with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer or heart defects. The remainder would go to University of California general acute care hospitals.
The nonprofit advocacy association backing Proposition 3 represents eight not-for-profit children’s hospitals, including Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, and faces little organized opposition. The measure is endorsed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and the California State PTA.
Others who are knowledgeable about the state’s long-term fiscal condition worry that an otherwise well-intentioned initiative will add another financial burden to an already overtapped state budget.
“When you borrow money to pay for things, you have to pay that back with interest, and that adds to our budgetary obligations in the long term,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, which advocates for low- and middle-income Californians. “Voters need to think about the fiscal consequences of the measures they consider at the ballot box.”
Critics say the measure is an end-run around the troubled budget, pulling at heart strings to get at the public’s purse strings.
“Our concern is regarding the abuse of the initiative process by special interests,” said Lewis Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee. “We’re seeing more and more of this, where interest groups write initiatives that utilize public funds, whether they be bond funds or taxes, for their own self-interest and self-aggrandizement.”
Uhler criticized the “motherhood and apple pie wording” used to promote the initiative.
“Who could be against a children’s hospital?” he said.
