Since she was a child, 17-year-old Sundance Medina has lived across the street from Drake Park in a low-income neighborhood north of Downtown Long Beach. However, after two shootings at the park when she was younger and frequent gang activity there through the years, Sundance hasn’t been able to enjoy the park much, staying cooped up in her home.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto of the new state budget Democrats passed this week represents a gamble that California’ deadlocked Legislature can find its way to a bipartisan solution that has evaded it all year.
Longer sentences and three-strikes requirements lead to an aging prison population – many of whom are serving life sentences and likely to die behind bars. These inmates come at great cost to the state – prisoners’ medical bills can range as high as $2.5 million, according to a report by a federally appointed receiver who oversees the state’s prison health care.
In Salinas, a group of activists say the local hospital board, elected by the voters to run the public healthcare system, doesn’t represent the people it serves.
Nearly six in ten low-income Californians say they would be interested in switching health care providers if they had a choice, according to a new, independent survey of poor and near-poor state residents. And if the federal health reform passed last year is implemented as planned, many of those Californians will get that choice. That new freedom could reshape the health care landscape in ways large and small. One thing it would do is force community clinics and health
centers to be more responsive to patient needs, since many of those patients would have the ability to go elsewhere with federal subsidies and a state health insurance exchange open for business.
As the state plans to shut down a program that provides community-based health services to 35,000 seniors and people with disabilities, critics say the move will force many of those people into nursing homes, which will give them a less rewarding life while costing the state and the taxpayers more. The cut will also be a major blow to the centers themselves, and their workforce.
The decades-long public battle between real estate developers and farmland preservationists went on hiatus the past few years as the residential housing market collapsed in the recession. Farm advocates have long fought to save some of the best farmland in the world, as cities in the San Joaquin Valley grow and houses spread over land once covered with
almond orchards and vineyards.
El Concilio, a community-based non profit agency in Stockton, provides a variety of services to people throughout the city and beyond.
Defenders of a program that provides health care to keep low-income people with disabilities from being hospitalized or placed in nursing homes sued today to block the state from eliminating the program. The Adult Day Health Care program serves 35,000 people, including many older adults. It is a benefit provided through Medi-Cal, the subsidized health program financed by a combination of state and federal money.
As the June 15 budget deadline approaches, rumors that the Legislature will send yet another spending cap to the ballot abound. These rumors are somewhat surprising, since voters haven’t even had the chance to weigh in on the last cap sent to the ballot – ACA 4 of 2010, approved as part of last October’s budget agreement – and the fact that California’s existing cap is arguably one of the toughest in the nation. Details of what may, or may not, be under consideration are well hidden under the cone of silence. But the details are crucial, and how a spending limit is designed will determine what kind of consequences it will have for the state and its people. Here are some issues to consider.