Supervisors Plead for Aid in Washington : Budget: Molina and Yaroslavsky seek health care money to ease county’s deficit and are joined by Boxer and other members of Congress. In Los Angeles, judge refuses to block cutbacks and layoffs.

Los Angeles County officials came to the nation’s capital in desperation Wednesday to plead for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal health care money to ease a catastrophic $1.2-billion budget deficit.

The pace was feverish and the fruits promising but uncertain as Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky sprinted from one meeting to the next. They begged for payment of $226 million in federal Medi-Cal reimbursements before the Board of Supervisors sits down next week to face the county’s most serious budget crisis in memory.

“We are here to talk about the health care crisis in Los Angeles and to get them engaged in helping us avoid it,” Molina said. “The time frame is critical. We have a key decision to make on Monday and we need a clear understanding of the kind of assistance they will provide before we have to start making drastic cuts.”

Yaroslavsky, nursing a bad cold, at one point waited in the outer office of Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer for a scheduled 15-minute chat.

“At stake are the very human services upon which one of every three people in the county rely--health,” he said.

The two Democratic supervisors, who arrived Tuesday night, crisscrossed the capital Wednesday to plead their fiscal case.

On Capitol Hill, they preached to congressional Democrats over breakfast, buttonholed President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore for a precious 90 seconds at the National Archives and ended the day with a full-court press with White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, where they laid out short- and long-term solutions to the county’s health care crisis.

In a letter to the President, eight Democratic members of Congress from the Los Angeles area called on Clinton to immediately intervene to address “a serious and unprecedented fiscal emergency” facing the nation’s largest county.

“The very survival of Los Angeles County is at stake,” they said. “We believe that federal intervention is not only warranted, but absolutely essential if a solution . . . is to be reached.”

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the supervisors got some good news when a Superior Court judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order blocking them from continuing to make cutbacks and layoffs to close the deficit.

It was the second time in a month that Judge Diane Wayne rejected requests for such an injunction from the county’s largest union, Service Employees International Union Local 660.

In their latest lawsuit, filed Tuesday, lawyers for the union said the county should not have ordered $257 million in cuts and layoffs without consulting the union that represents as many as 10,000 employees who could lose their jobs. A lawyer for the county told Wayne that the county had done everything proper in ordering the cuts. Wayne, who ruled without comment, scheduled a show-cause hearing July 28.

In Washington, Yaroslavsky and Molina were joined by eight members of Congress and Boxer in a 45-minute appeal to Panetta.

They warned that the county’s crisis could trigger “a public health emergency of dire consequences,” including possible closure of the nation’s largest public hospital, County-USC Medical Center.

With one out of three Los Angeles County residents under 65 without medical insurance, the lawmakers said proposed cuts in the county budget could have “severe--and perhaps tragic--implications in terms of access to health care for those without insurance.”

They warned that closing County-USC could lead to “total collapse of the public trauma care network.”

Attending the White House meeting were Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park), Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton) and Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente).

“They are very keenly aware of our problems, they are engaged and we hope to hear from them in a few days,” said Becerra. He stands to lose more than most legislators if proposed cuts go through because his district includes County-USC.

He said he was heartened by Wednesday’s meeting. “I don’t think County-USC can close,” he said. “There is no way you could provide the magnitude of services that County-USC provides.

“There is a clear recognition on the part of the White House that there may be a claim for monies on the part of the county for healthcare financing.”

At issue is a reimbursement formula for Medi-Cal--the state health care program for the indigent. The county contends that it is owed $226 million in back claims that the federal government has yet to pay.

But critics contend that the crisis is partly the county’s own making, that leaders counted on federal money that was never certain and did nothing to reduce spending.

Now, with days left before facing Gargantuan cuts--their pleas met with a lukewarm reception in Sacramento last week--Washington is the court of last resort.

The Medi-Cal money is a crucial element in its plan for eliminating the deficit, but it is not the only problem Los Angeles County faces in Washington. The Republican-driven agenda is moving briskly through Congress with welfare and Medicare reform plans, among other cost-cutting measures that county officials say threaten to wipe them out on other fronts.

Because of its massive size--Los Angeles County is bigger than 42 states--it bears a disproportionate amount of budget cuts.

It is into this climate that the supervisors came asking for quick money--an item in extremely short supply around Washington as Congress works to chop away at a whopping deficit of its own.

Mostly they received encouraging feedback and no promises. But Yaroslavsky said he believed that the White House could make the Medi-Cal payments happen, and that the issue seemed to be on the mind of the President, who needs to win California in 1996.

“If the county of Los Angeles goes sour, this is a blemish not only on Los Angeles and California, but on the whole country,” Yaroslavsky said. “This is the biggest county in the United States.”

Times staff writers Jeffrey L. Rabin and Josh Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.