Want to keep your Medi-Cal benefits? Commit a crime.
That is the message – no doubt unintended – that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent when he signed one bill dealing with Medi-Cal benefits and vetoed another.
The bill he signed, Senate Bill 1147 by Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, requires the Department of Health Services to reinstate Medi-Cal benefits automatically for youthful offenders when they are released from juvenile hall or a state correctional facility.
Some 70 percent of such kids need mental health services that Medi-Cal provides. SB 1147 helps ensure they get the services, so it was well worth signing into law.
But if you're going to make sure that offenders get their MediCal benefits, why not make sure that former foster youths who age out of the state foster care system when they turn 18 keep their benefits until age 21, as the law now allows. These young adults are just as needy as the ex-juvenile offenders. And most haven't committed any crimes.
And yet, the governor vetoed Senate Bill 1132 by Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, which would have eliminated the requirement that former foster care youths reapply for benefits every year. Because so many of these young adults move a lot or are homeless, they often never get their MediCal application renewals and are dropped from the rolls, even though they remain eligible for benefits. Without benefits, many will allow their medical conditions to deteriorate. In some cases, they end up in emergency rooms, where the public cost of treating them is higher.
In his veto message, the governor said the federal government "requires states to conduct annual eligibility determinations." That's true, but the state can make that determination on its own, just as it does now for juvenile offenders.
It's easy. Look at the former foster youth's records. Was the kid in foster care when she turned 18? Is she 21 yet? If the answers are yes and no, respectively, she's eligible for benefits. It's as simple as that. There is no need to require the former foster child to duplicate what the state can do on its own. The paperwork chase is a back-door way of denying benefits to our state's most vulnerable young adults.
By signing one bill and not the other, the governor sends a cruel and downright bizarre message to former foster care youths. Lawmakers should give him a chance to send a different message next year.
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