Healthcare workers from all six Bay Area hospitals gathered at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital yesterday morning. They’re urging the state to allocate $500 million towards its public hospitals.<\/p>\n
San Francisco\u2019s Director of Public Health, Daniel Tsai addressed the crowd, saying, \u201cHere at San Francisco General Hospital, we’re the city’s only level one trauma center.”<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody in the city, regardless of income, is going to end up here,” he continued. “God forbid, if there’s a major trauma accident, and our services will be at risk because of these cuts.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tsai told KALW that people on Medi-Cal who don\u2019t have insurance will suffer the most.<\/p>\n
HR-1, also known as President Trump\u2019s \u201cBig Beautiful Bill,\u201d has cut nearly $3 billion in federal funding to hospitals across California.<\/p>\n
And Governor Gavin Newsom\u2019s latest version of the budget does little to make up for that. But advocates say the governor can still change his mind. <\/p>\n
Public hospitals provide care to everyone, regardless of their coverage or ability to pay. But without additional funding, California\u2019s public hospitals will be forced to reduce services and could even close.<\/p>\n
Advocates say that, ultimately, it could lead to an increase in preventable illnesses.<\/p>\n
Only 8% of California\u2019s hospitals are public. But two-thirds of burn victims in the state end up in a public hospital, and almost a third of the state’s psychiatric patients.<\/p>\n
Kristin Hardy, the Regional Vice President of SEIU 1021, said they\u2019re often the only form of preventative care for some Black and Brown communities.<\/p>\n
Hardy added by saying, \u201cIt\u2019d devastate and collapse California. I mean, especially with the rise in healthcare costs, the cut to food stamps and SNAP benefits, it’s going to start affecting people’s health, and it already has.\u200a We’ve already started experiencing it in Oakland and out here with closures of certain viable clinics that serve the most vulnerable populations.”<\/p>\n
About 7% of Californians are uninsured. If the state does not step in to help, this figure could grow to 15%.<\/p>\n
The state has until June 15th to pass a budget bill for the upcoming fiscal year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Healthcare workers from all six Bay Area hospitals gathered at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital yesterday morning. They’re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-347886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}