Deep Impact, 2010: Budget Cuts for California Health Programs

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed 2010-2011 state budget, released Jan. 8, met with the usual outrage from the state's Democratic leaders for its dramatic cuts to health and social safety net programs. California Healthline offers a nice round-up of the media coverage here.

This, of course, is just the opening salvo in this year's budget negotiations. More detail, and a more realistic picture of cutbacks in state health programs will emerge in the Governor's so-called "May revise," a mid-year revision of the proposed budget.

That doesn't mean it's not a good time to take a look at how current cuts to state-funded health programs are playing out in your community.

The California advocacy group Health Access offers a road map for reporters in its Jan. 7 report on the impact of 2009 health budget cuts after six months. Each bullet point in this excerpt gives direction for a separate story.

* Almost three million low-income adults have lost ten important benefits, such as dental care, vision care, speech therapy, and psychological services; in the last six months, over 450,000 Californians in poverty have either had to forego or pay for dental care and another 240,000 have lost coverage for prescriptions eyeglasses

* About 93,000 children waited uninsured for Healthy Families coverage until the cut was averted by non-government donations and higher cost sharing for 269,000 children on the program

* At least five community clinics in the state have already been forced to shut down and hundreds of workers have been laid off, plus another 10 clinics are on the brink of closure

* Thousands of HIV/AIDS patients have been denied access to needed services and affordable medications they rely on

* About 300,000 low-income women no longer have access to life-saving breast cancer screenings

Who do you ask about the local impact of these budget cuts? The usual suspects include your local community clinic consortium, public health officer, county hospital executive, and emergency room directors of non-safety-net hospitals, who might be seeing patients who formerly got care from a local free clinic. Head to your local unemployment office or food bank to talk to people who may have lost their health insurance and are navigating the safety-net health system.

Other sources to monitor for health-related budget developments: Health Access' blog, the Center for Budget Priorities' blog, and this Northern California community clinic consortium blog.

Here are some story ideas I offered in 2009 after the May revise was released, posing drastic cuts to state health programs. Here is a second round of story ideas from the May revise, and a round-up of last year's stories about the potential impact of those cuts.  

I'd love to see some examples of this kind of coverage, and I hope you'll share them in the comments below. You need to be a registered member of Center for Health Journalism Digital to leave a comment, so if you haven't joined yet, click here. It's easy, quick and free. You can follow us on Twitter, too, @ReportingHealth.