Welfare Programs

Opening his public campaign for approval of the $2.77-trillion budget he had sent to Congress 48 hours before, President Bush said Wednesday that his call to reduce spending on social services -- a central feature of his proposal -- represented necessary fiscal discipline and was not really a cut. Bush said that the $65-billion reduction in entitlement programs, such as Medicare, would come from slowing the rate of growth. "People call it a cut in Medicare. That's not a cut," he said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed emergency legislation Friday to immediately repeal a 5% cut in payments to doctors and other Medi-Cal providers who treat nearly 3.3 million poor and disabled Californians. The reduction, which took effect New Year's Day, cut payments to physicians, dentists and home healthcare agencies that treat patients on a fee-for-service basis.

In a ceremony in the heart of downtown's skid row on Friday, about $70 million skimmed from the wealthiest Californians was transferred to help thousands of mentally ill and homeless people in Los Angeles County. It was the first cash infusion to arrive from a novel initiative that imposed a 1% additional tax on those earning more than $1 million a year.

Let's be candid about the controversy over whether film director Rob Reiner misspent public funds by raiding the child-development program created by his last ballot initiative, Proposition 10, for cash to promote his new Preschool for All ballot initiative. Reiner's not the only one taking advantage. The supervisory standards set up by Proposition 10 in 1998 are scandalously lax.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is facing pressure from states to increase its employee benefits, has more of its workers enrolled in public healthcare programs than any other company in at least 17 states, according to a survey by labor union AFL-CIO. Kelly Hobbs, a spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark.

Signaling a major shift in its homeless policy, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $100-million plan Tuesday to reduce the concentration of homeless services in skid row by establishing five centers across the county that would provide temporary shelter and social services for transients.

Los Angeles County officials are trying to determine whether any of 14 small drop-in centers for homeless people can be converted to the five regional facilities being established as the county attempts to move services for transients out of downtown. The facilities are in communities across Los Angeles County, including Pasadena, Long Beach, North Hollywood, El Monte, Santa Monica, Venice, West Covina and Glendale.

Buoyed by higher tax revenues from a hot housing market, Los Angeles County leaders are preparing to dramatically expand services for the homeless and boost public safety. But as they gear up to debate an anticipated $20-billion budget this summer, they still face a looming crisis in the county's gargantuan health system. If trends continue, mounting healthcare costs driven in part by the uninsured could push the nation's most populous county more than $1 billion in the red in three years.

When kindergartener Michelle Lara suffered ear infections or high fevers, her mother took the Santa Ana 6-year-old to local emergency rooms for care, paying as much as $1,200 per visit. Michelle wasn't covered by health insurance. That changed when Michelle recently enrolled in a novel program in Orange County that offers free or low-cost health insurance to thousands of uninsured Orange County children.

Welfare recipients and their friends and relatives could be defrauding taxpayers of $500 million a year through the county's child-care programs, a grand jury report concludes. According to the report, released Thursday, some county employees estimate that half of the $1.1 billion in funding for the CalWORKs program is lost to fraud because the Department of Public Social Services doesn't verify that welfare-to-work recipients meet the requirements for child-care payments. "Widespread abuse ...