Proposition 3 – Maintaining Children’s Hospitals

Prop. 3 authorizes $1 billion in bonds to build new children’s hospitals and upgrade existing facilities. The cost to the state is $64 million/year for 30 years. Californians will pay an average of $1.75/year for this program. Yeah, four years ago we approved $750 million for children’s hospitals and there’s $350 million of that money left, but they need more dough.

Here’s why:

The L.A. Times reports that 55% of children’s hospital payments are through Medi-Cal (public assistance). Medi-Cal pays so little that the hospitals’ fund raising efforts are used to offset treatment costs. There is nothing left in their budgets for construction or upgrades. Also construction costs have skyrocketed in the past few years, the RAND Corporation reports that a fully equipped hospital now costs $1,000/square foot. With California’s population exploding and with more and more kids needing treatment, there’s no way the hospitals can keep up.

If we had a functioning health insurance system, we may not need to fund things like Prop. 3. Hospitals wouldn’t be required to front so much of the treatment costs and could finance their own facilities. Hopefully this will change, but until then we have to foot the bill, budget crisis or not. Half of the patients are on Medi-Cal, we have a responsibility to make sure the facilities are safe and state-of-the-art.

The Johnny California Editorial Board Recommends a YES vote on Proposition 3.