Tax Hike for Health Programs Urged : State budget: County officials and medical providers seek to prevent cuts in what they perceive as an already crippled system. They make their appeal to the governor and legislators.

With final deliberations on a new state budget about to begin, county officials and health-care providers began an intensive lobbying campaign Tuesday designed to stave off cuts in what they call an already crippled health delivery system.

During a news conference at the Capitol, health officials urged Gov. George Deukmejian and the Legislature to consider a tax increase, rather than program cuts, to close a $3.6-billion revenue gap.

The press conference marked a stepped-up lobbying campaign by groups representing a wide variety of people depending on the public health system, from AIDS patients to the severely disabled. An annual ritual, the lobbying campaign will last from now until the governor and Legislature agree on a budget. A two-house budget conference committee will begin deliberations today on rival versions of a $56-billion budget prepared by the Senate and Assembly.

With tax collections in the new budget year expected to run about $3.6 billion below what it will take to finance state services at present levels, the governor and lawmakers are debating whether to use budget cuts or tax increases, or a combination of the two, to close the gap.

Dr. Gail Anderson, an emergency room physician at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, said waiting lists at emergency rooms now are commonplace and warned that any further cuts in state funds will be disastrous.

“We already are in trouble. . . . If we are cut any further we are going to have to close down, we are going to have to close our doors,” Anderson said.

Citing a proposal by Deukmejian to cut $150 million in county health funds, health officials said counties would be forced to reduce scores of local services.

They predicted that clinics would be closed and that services in jails, children’s hospitals and alcohol and drug abuse programs would be reduced. Some counties would have to cut back on ambulance services, others would be forced to eliminate or reduce programs for AIDS, nutrition, family services and suicide intervention, the officials said.

“We are in a survival mode right now,” said Dan Weisburd, president of the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

Yolo County Supervisor Betsy Marchand, speaking for the County Supervisors Assn. of California, said she and the others “support a tax increase,” but did not specify which taxes they would support raising.

Also appearing at the news conference was Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, who earlier in the day unveiled sketchy details of a budget-balancing plan that would raise $2 billion through tax increases and by speeding up tax collections. Most of the money in the plan would be generated by raising the top rate of the personal income tax from 9.3% to 11% for individual taxpayers earning $100,000 a year and couples with taxable income of $200,000 or more.

In a related move, Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento)--a member of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s inner circle--proposed a budget-balancing plan that would close the $3.6-billion gap by using a combination of budget cuts, new taxes and adjustments in the tax code.

The plan would freeze cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients and the aged, blind and disabled while also suspending indexing--the law that prevents taxpayers from being bumped into higher tax brackets when they get pay raises equal to the increase in the cost of living. The proposal also would strictly conform California’s tax laws to the federal code, repeal the sales tax exemption on candy and raise alcohol taxes.