1999-09-13 - County Fights for Right to Cut off Indigent Care


So now it's official:  Counties can eliminate healthcare for the poor
if providing it becomes economically burdonsom.



California Healthline, Monday, September 13, 1999

County Fights for Right to Cut off Indigent Care

Attorneys for Sacramento County last week argued before the state
Supreme Court that the county should be able to end or restrict
medical care for the poor if the exigencies of the economy so dictate,
the Sacramento Bee reports.

Supervising deputy county counsel Michele Bach "argued that state laws
passed during the last recession relieved the counties of their
historical obligation to provide health care for those to are too poor
to turn elsewhere."

She said in 1992, "[T]he Legislature said need is not the defining
criterion anymore ... harsh as that may be." Bach said that several
proposals made by the county over the past seven years designed to
mitigate the impact of future recessions -- including "scrapping all
medical care to the indigent" or curtailing it only to those earning a
certain level of income per month -- are in fact legal.


 The state Court of Appeals in Sacramento has ruled in the county's
favor, but an injunction issued in 1992 by Sacramento Superior Court
Judge Peter Mering "has blocked the county from doing anything
drastic."

Arguing against the county proposals, Richard Rothschild of the
Western Center on Law and Poverty said Thursday that "no law allows
the kinds of cutbacks for which Sacramento County is seeking
authorization."

He added that such a law would force all indigent persons seeking care
into emergency rooms. Comments and questions by Justice Joyce Kennard
and Chief Justice Ronald George reveal that they may agree with him.
Both questioned the reasoning of the appeals court "and implied they
disagreed with it." The Court is expected to rule within 90 days