{"id":700801,"date":"2026-06-13T01:31:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700801\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T01:31:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:31:24","slug":"l-a-county-health-officials-ask-state-for-emergency-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700801\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A. County health officials ask state for emergency funds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services has joined a chorus of California hospitals and health systems<\/a> lobbying the state for a $500-million emergency payment to public hospitals bracing for massive financial losses.<\/p>\n

The California Assn. of Public Hospitals and Health Systems is requesting a one-time general fund payment in the 2026-27 budget to help cover inpatient care for fee-for-service Medi-Cal patients<\/a> at the state\u2019s 17 public hospitals.<\/p>\n

While the exact percentage of the $500 million allocated to each hospital would depend on inpatient claims, the county expects that roughly 25%, or $125 million, would end up at Los Angeles County hospitals, said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the county\u2019s Department of Health Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the money that is really necessary to serve as a stopgap and continue that lifeline that the public hospitals desperately need, particularly with the state\u2019s proposed shift of undocumented individuals from managed care into fee-for-service,\u201d Ghaly said.<\/p>\n

Ghaly praised county voters for passing Measure ER<\/a>, which will provide an estimated $220 million annually for the next five years to the county health system through a new half-cent sales tax, Ghaly said.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not enough to stanch what the county estimates will be a $700-million annual loss by the 2028-29 fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The L.A. County Department of Health Services is the largest public health system in the state and the second-largest in the nation. It serves as a safety net for the county\u2019s 10 million residents, providing healthcare regardless of an individual\u2019s ability to pay.<\/p>\n

More than 80% of the system\u2019s patients rely on Medi-Cal, Los Angeles General Medical Center Chief Executive Jorge Orozco told<\/a> a state Senate committee in March.<\/p>\n

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law last summer, alters Medicaid eligibility requirements and includes about $1 trillion in federal Medicaid reductions over 10 years, according to the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office<\/a>. As a result, California is expected to lose tens of billions in total funding for Medi-Cal, the state\u2019s Medicaid program.<\/p>\n

About 660,000 people in Los Angeles County are expected to lose Medi-Cal coverage, \u201cbut they will not stop needing healthcare,\u201d Orozco said in March. \u201cThey will still come to our emergency rooms for everything from routine illness to life-threatening conditions. And safety net hospital systems like ours will be forced to absorb those costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

County health officials have enacted hiring freezes, consolidated services, reduced overtime and taken other cost-cutting measures in anticipation of the losses, resulting in about $230 million in savings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we need to be clear: We cannot cut our way out of a funding loss of this magnitude,\u201d the department said in a statement<\/a> released this week. \u201cWithout help from the state, we will be forced to consider options no one wants, reduced patient services, staff layoffs and potential facility closures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The county has not yet identified specific services for closure, Ghaly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is entirely on preventing the harm that would come before we have to make those tough choices,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

A memo on the department\u2019s fiscal outlook prepared for the county Board of Supervisors sounded the alarm in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the patients we serve, losing Medi-Cal doesn\u2019t mean they stop getting sick \u2014 it means losing access to care. Health Services will still be here, but with over 600,000 more uninsured patients in L.A. County alone, the strain will be felt across our health system and across every emergency room in Los Angeles County,\u201d the memo<\/a> read. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout substantial new revenue sources, Health Services will have no alternative but to consider planning for service curtailments \u2014 including possible facility closures and staff layoffs \u2014 beginning in early 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services has joined a chorus of California hospitals and health systems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[303112,741,303110,97,252,255,13099,253,54598,303111,193403,2014,18754,303114,137241,13109,303113,2394],"class_list":["post-700801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-california-hospital","tag-emergency-fund","tag-ghaly","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-services","tag-health-system","tag-healthcare","tag-inpatient-care","tag-l-a-county-health-official","tag-los-angeles-county-department","tag-medi-cal","tag-patient","tag-potential-facility-closure","tag-public-hospital","tag-state","tag-undocumented-individual","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}