COLTON -- Medical and emergency services are severely under funded and can't take any more of the Governor's proposed spending cuts to balance the budget, said local legislators, paramedics, physicians, nurses and a patient who gathered at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton on Friday for a news conference to protest Schwarzenegger's revised spending plan.

Released on May 14, the Governor's plan recommends reducing hospital funding by $100 million and eliminating Medi-Cal coverage to over a quarter of a million low-income children and adults in this upcoming fiscal year. Arrowhead stands to lose $5 million a year.

"The Governor is proposing drastic cuts to health care," said Assembly Member Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto), who was joined by state Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino). "We're here because the biggest of these cuts is to Medi-Cal and our public hospitals."

Renee Eblen of Redlands has a severely asthmatic son and a paraplegic husband. At the news conference, she said that she feared being cut from the Medi-Cal program and not having access to treatment and medical supplies for her family. Assembly Member Carter has 4,600 children in her district that could lose Medi-Cal coverage. She represents Rialto, Colton, west San Bernardino, east Fontana, Muscoy and Bloomington.

Under the Governor's proposal, the already-low reimbursement rates that the state pays would be reduced by another ten percent, Carter said. "That will essentially take California's Medi-Cal rates, already some of the lowest in the nation, to the bottom of the barrel."

"Too many specialists are refusing to treat these medically under-funded patients," said Dr. Rodney Borger, chairman of Arrowhead's Emergency Department. He gave the example of a Medi-Cal patient with a simple broken leg who had to be transported 72 miles all the way from Barstow to Colton because no local orthopedist was willing to treat him for uncompensated care. Arrowhead received only $24 from Medi-Cal to fix his broken leg in the emergency room. A dialysis patient had to wait ten days for a routine procedure, Borger added, which forced her to go to Arrowhead's emergency room for care. At that point, she had to be hospitalized instead and almost died.

"Shame on us California," Borger said. "They're going to cut programs for the poor and disabled, people who can't speak for themselves, to balance the budget."

"These cuts just don't affect Medi-Cal patients," said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, Arrowhead Medical Director and Chief of the Department of Surgery. "Medi-Cal patients will suffer quite a bit, but it will effect everyone's access to medical care." Carter said: "We need a responsible budget that makes it easier to get medical care, not harder. As we move forward with the budget negotiations, it should be a priority to not take away crucial services."

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Visit State Assembly Member Wilmer Amina Carter's web site