California Assembly Passes Healthy Families Funding, Mulls DMHC Move September 9, 2011 News, Public Health AB 922, ABX1 21, DMHC, Healthy Families 0 Among the raft of bills that floated through the Legislature in the final days of session were two big health-related ones: ABX1 21 by Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) to fund Health Families passed with a vote of 61-9; and, AB 922 by Bill Monning (D-Carmel), is designed to expand and move the Office of the Patient Advocate. It took on an amendment that also moves its parent agency, the Department of Managed Health Care. Those agencies currently reside under the Department of Business, Transportation and Housing. ABX1 21 is designed to fund a large chunk of the Healthy Families budget by extending by a year a tax on Medi-Cal managed care organizations. Those MCOs actually support the tax extension. If the bill had not passed, the state was contemplating a massive shift of children off the Healthy Families program. Officials will need to discuss how to deal with a $390 million budget shortfall—that’s about one-third of the Healthy Families budget, which serves 870,000 kids in California. The bill to move the Office of the Patient Advocate under the umbrella of the California Health and Human Services Agency makes sense, Monning said, because of pending implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which the OPA will be involved in. That same reasoning was applied to the parent agency of OPA, the Department of Managed Health Care, according to the floor analysis. Source: http://www.californiahealthline.org/capitol-desk/2011/9/bill-amendment-would-move-dmhc-into-hhs.aspx#ixzz1XTiRMqym Comments are closed.
