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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > FUNDING FOR HEALTHY FAMILIES RESTORED
Article published - October 5, 2009
Credit: SONOMA NEWS
Funding for Healthy Families restored
By Emily Charrier-Botts
Thanks to a new piece of legislation, funding has been restored for one of the state's largest health insurance programs for children, which 494 Valley families enrolled in through the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center.
While preparing the state budget this summer in the face of a massive deficit, the legislature voted to cut the $196 million that funds the California Healthy Families Program. The move cut off access to health care for the 225,000 children across the state that utilize the program intended to provide affordable health care to families just beyond the income requirement to be covered through Medi-Cal.
In response, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, created AB 1422, which proposes to replace the lost funding by utilizing tobacco-tax monies collected by First Five California; federal matching funds; raising the premiums and co-pays for families involved in the program; and creating a new 2.35-percent tax on the total operating revenues of Medi-Cal managed care-health plans. The bill sailed through the Assembly and the House by early September and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already announced intentions to sign it into law.
"Healthy Families will be back like it was," said Patricia Talbot, CEO of the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center.
Talbot said when the funding was revoked in July, Healthy Families created wait lists of hundreds of thousands of children to prioritize who would receive benefits first. Now, the children on those wait lists will be reinstated in the program, which may take a few weeks as there are so many families involved.
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