Schwarzenegger Budget Denies Some Health Care

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/national/18CALI.html?hp

It is nearly impossible for many Californians to comprehend the sum of $14 billion, the current estimate of the state's budget deficit next year, and the cuts and contortions that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to make it disappear.

So think about $320 a month, the price for Esther Bush to include her 8-year-old daughter, Natalia, on her employer-paid health plan. She says she cannot afford it. Governor Schwarzenegger says the state cannot afford to insure Natalia, either.

Ms. Bush, a medical social worker at a nonprofit agency in Los Angeles, is not poor — she earns nearly $30,000 a year — but neither has she climbed into the middle class. Ms. Bush, 33, who shares a two-bedroom apartment in a dicey Los Angeles neighborhood with her sister and brother-in-law and their three children. She drives a 1989 Ford Tempo, pays $300 a month for after-school care for her daughter and lives, she said, from paycheck to paycheck.

Until last spring, Natalia received medical coverage under Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program. But when Ms. Bush received a small increase in her salary, she no longer qualified for the program and instead was told to apply to Healthy Families, a state-federal health insurance program for the near-poor.

But that symapathy is tempered when I remember that many working class voters were just enamored with Swarzenegger and voted for him, or didn't bother to vote at all. People get the government they deserve.

were screwed before they even voted for him...it's all falling into place...Arnie ran on promises but is now cutting where it hurts...figures...

I agree...the people deserve the government they voted for...

Like many ex-Californians, my parents left California for Arizona in 1997. My father is retired and on disability. Thank goodness he is not living in CA now to deal with all this nightmare.

left cali for arizona. made a killing on their house and moved to a mobile. seems like there are a lot of them out there....

...who live under his control, but DIDN'T vote for the prick? They are suffering as well.

With some token "liberal" gestures as cover, the "Terminator" is trying to push through the same right wing agenda that the repugs have never been able to muster the votes for.

The media has given MeatHead a largely free ride. In 2000 the nation got sold an extremist under the cover of a compassionate conservative (tell that to the 3,000,000 people living in "colonias" in Texas). In 2003, Cali people got sold a very conservative program under the guise of a liberal/moderate repug.

I knew about these creeps and so should've everybody else --- but it doesn't work that way --- the media has to inform, or most people won't get the information that they need.

But what is worst, is that most people still don't know what is going on, and the media are still (largely) giving a free pass to the extreme right. Think about that when you are dreaming of an easy victory in the fall.

:eyes:

Maybe she can ask Jay Leno for the insurance for her child.

You assume a lot.