Neediest people get turned away

Re “Further fee cuts force a Medi-Cal exodus,” March 24

I am appalled by the attitude of physician Ted Mazer and his colleagues. Medi-Cal is meant to help the weakest people in California. How can these doctors live with themselves when they deny these needy patients access to treatment? There are fewer sites where these Medi-Cal dependents can go, placing an even bigger burden on those doctors compassionate enough to care for these people.

The article says some doctors have treated Medi-Cal patients “out of a sense of professional responsibility.” Where is that professional responsibility now?

With the well-reported history of Medicaid fraud in mind, and now this article, I wonder if doctors really put patients first and their own gain last.

Emily Jackson

Valencia

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Los Angeles will have the most to lose if proposed Medi-Cal cuts are implemented. More than 2 million L.A. County residents depend on Medi-Cal. With Medi-Cal provider rates already ranking among the lowest in the nation, the last thing the state should do is slash them further.

Inevitably, Medi-Cal patients who can’t find a doctor will be forced to seek costly care in our overburdened emergency rooms -- a situation we can ill afford as 10 local ERs have closed in just the last three years. In the end, the “savings” that the state hopes to realize will just appear somewhere else on the health system’s balance sheet.

Piling on a health system already on the verge of collapse just doesn’t add up.

Yolanda Vera

Director, LA Health Action

Los Angeles

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What is the message about the health of the American social compact as told by two March 24 front-page Times stories? There they are, side by side: summer rentals in Malibu going for $150,000 a month next to a report about continued reductions in Medi-Cal fees to doctors ($168 for a tonsillectomy?) causing a widespread exodus of physicians from the program.

Where is the leadership toward a fairer system?

Patty Ecker

Camarillo