State Funds Expected to Avert Cuts, Health Chief Gates Says

Health Director Robert Gates told the Board of Supervisors on Monday that he is optimistic Los Angeles County will receive enough money from the $2.5-billion state surplus to avert long-threatened cuts in health services.

But while providing enough money to salvage needed programs, Gates said, the surplus may not prove enough of a bonus to ensure pay raises for all employees--and layoffs still loom as a possibility.

About 100 people concerned about the threatened cuts--despite the surplus--turned out at the Hall of Administration to urge the supervisors to supplement any state aid with county funds to reduce the long waits for services at clinics and hospitals.

The long lines, speakers told the board, often discourage patients from seeking care until they must receive treatment in the emergency room at higher expense.

The supervisors’ hearing, required by state law, was scheduled before state officials last month announced that there would be an unexpected surplus in California’s own revenues that could be used to help local governments and schools.

Los Angeles County officials earlier had proposed $55.7 million in health cuts--including closing dozens of pediatric facilities, outpatient health centers and family planning clinics and reducing services at hospitals.

‘I’m quite optimistic that we won’t have to make those curtailments,” Gates told the supervisors Monday.

Gates said he expects the county to receive an additional $123 million in state aid. The additional amount, in excess of the $55.7 million, will be used to help pay for salary raises for employees and cost increases for supplies.

May Be Insufficient

The additional aid, however, may not be enough to cover pay raises for all employees, possibly necessitating layoffs, Gates added.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn opened the five-hour hearing by urging people in the audience to “go to Sacramento” to lobby state officials for more money for the county.

“Thanks for speaking,” Hahn said before anyone in the audience went to the microphone. “But we don’t have any money in the county.”

Several speakers said they have been lobbying state officials. But they contended that county officials could find money in the proposed $9.2-billion county budget to improve the health care system.

They complained that funding for health services has declined since 1980, when a conservative majority came to power on the board and began redirecting funds from social services to law enforcement.

According to Gates, funding for health care has been reduced from 16.8% of the county’s total funding in the 1980-81 fiscal year to 8% in 1989-90.

‘Even if there are no cuts . . . it is very important that the county address the existing problems,” said Melinda Bird, an attorney at the Western Center for Law and Poverty.

Bird told supervisors that critically ill patients spend up to five days “on gurneys in hallways” waiting for admission to intensive-care units.

She also presented the board with what she said were sworn declarations from more than 40 county doctors and nurses attesting to “preventable” patient deaths and “unnecessary” suffering they have witnessed due to overcrowded, underfunded county health facilities.

Legal Aid attorneys announced last week that they would present the affidavits to the board.

In an interview, Gates said that sometimes “people aren’t where they ought to be in our system . . . . I think there are compromises (but) we think not to the point of seriously affecting patient care.”

Conservative Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Pete Schabarum were absent Monday. Schabarum had other commitments, according to an aide who declined to be more specific. Antonovich was in Switzerland attending an international conference on refugee relief.

But conservative Supervisor Deane Dana said that health services “still takes a tremendous part of our budget,” accounting for $1.9 billion of the proposed $9.2-billion spending program.

“We have no other areas to cut back,” he said. “What do they want us to do--close down the libraries?”

Supervisors will continue public hearings through Friday. Budget deliberations will begin July 19.