Dan Walters: Medi-Cal a case study in wishful thinking

SacBee: Capitol Alert ^ | 3/6/11 | Dan Walters

[SmithL]

Gordon Duffy was a freshman assemblyman from the San Joaquin Valley in 1966 when then-Gov. Pat Brown and the Legislature fashioned a health care program for the poor named "Medi-Cal."

Medi-Cal would take advantage of a newly minted, obscure provision of the federal Medicare program for the elderly, leveraging the promise of federal money to extend care to poor Californians who hitherto had been dependent on medical charity.

Duffy, an optometrist who later chaired the Assembly Health Committee, recalls that the Medi-Cal program was launched on assurances from Brown that it was affordable and workable.

"No one in the world thought it through," Duffy said in a 2008 interview. "They (the Brown administration) really pushed so hard on the positive effects. … Everyone said it was a wonderful thing."

Nearly a half-century later, it's become a $41.6 billion a year array of services for 7.5 million Californians. It has one of the nation's highest enrollment rates, thanks to the state's relatively liberal qualification standards, although spending per recipient is below average.

Not surprisingly, it's one of the largest and fastest growing components of the state budget, costing the general fund $13 billion a year. Brown's son, Jerry, now serving his second stint as governor and facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, wants to slash it.

[SmithL]

Wait for it: Women & children hit hardest.

[Tea Party Reveler]

California is getting more ungovernable by the day. Brown and the Democrats are out of time, money, lies and excuses.

They are hoping Washington will cut them a big check but the chances of that happeneing now are not good. They refuse to cut, refuse to make efficiencies, economies, tough choices like limit welfare and get rid of illegal aliens.

YouTube = Solano Communist County - Solano USSR!

[BfloGuy]

And then there's New York which spends almost double what California does with half the population. Things are so bad here that even Gov. Cuomo isn't proposing new taxes.

(Makes me think it's a lot worse then we even know.)

[BfloGuy]

then = than

[markman46]

Medi-Cal is a joke, payments to dr’s and hospitals are 1/2 of medicare, dr’s are dropping out left and right, it needs a trim badly

[Vigilanteman]

Any idea how many of the 7.5 million Californians using Medi-Cal are actually in the country legally?

[Vigilanteman]

Any idea how many of the 7.5 million Californians using Medi-Cal are actually in the country legally?

[Bob]

From the article:

...it's become a $41.6 billion a year array of services for 7.5 million Californians.

In the following paragraph:

...costing the general fund $13 billion a year.

Of course, since that $28.6 billion difference is covered by federal government money, that part doesn't cost taxpayers anything. </sarcasm>

[Tea Party Reveler]

I’m having a contest with a guy I used to fly with in the Air Force who now lives in New York. We are having a contest on who’s state is more depraved, horrible and worse—New York or California. So far, I’m winning—California is far worse!

[markman46]

only the anchor babies get the Medi-cal,mom/pop don’t, but everyone uses the emergency rooms

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Medi-cal is a brand name of pet foods, sold through vetanerians.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Medi-cal is a brand name of pet foods, sold through veterinarians.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

$42 billion to bums and illegals, but it is the state employees who worked 30 years and just want what they were promised who are the bad guys./dripping sarc