Transcription
I do want to add a couple important points here as we look ahead to the May revise. One is that our highest priority item has to do with funding for public hospital systems. We know that there is a lot of conversation happening around the impacts of HR1 to hospitals at large. But we are concerned that that conversation is too diluted in looking at hospitals across the state and not concentrated and focused on the outsized and vital role that the 6% of hospitals that are public play.
Because here's the reality. The state doesn't have enough money to backfill all of the HR1 cuts. And so if they sprinkle the little bit of funding, including with this excellent proposal from the Senate to get some additional dedicated revenue for medical, but if they sprinkle that too broadly, it will not be a sufficient amount of funding to save anything. So the state has difficult choices, right? Prioritization is always hard. Uh but we believe on the merits that the specific role for public hospitals, the vital and essential role that they play for all Californians health care requires and demands that the state give public hospitals unique attention. So that's going to be a primary focus of all of our efforts between now and the adoption of the budget. And it is something that's very concerning.
The second item that I wanted to highlight is that there's separate from the budget conversation concerns that we are hearing about proposed changes to the state-owned medical program and how it's structured with medical managed care in ways that could be extraordinarily harmful for revenue for the county. So, we don't know if that's something that might come forward in the May revise. We don't know if that's something that the state may seek to do administratively without legislative action uh or otherwise. But the specific concern there is a redesign of the mechanism around the program that would have very detrimental impacts to our local revenues. So we're keeping our eye out on that among many other things. I wanted to note those two specific areas of focus for us and we will be off to the races in the coming weeks as the May revise comes out and then the Senate and Assembly respond. Fund.