Public health care: Medi-Cal: demonstration projects.

Existing law provides for the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid Program provisions. Existing law provides for the Health Care Coverage Initiative, which is a federal waiver demonstration project established to expand health care coverage to low-income uninsured individuals who are not currently eligible for the Medi-Cal program and other specified public health coverage programs. Existing law requires the department, pursuant to federal approval of a successor demonstration project, to authorize a local Low Income Health Program (LIHP) to provide health care services to eligible low-income individuals under certain circumstances. Under existing law, a county, city and county, consortium of counties serving a region of more than one county, or a health authority may be eligible to operate an approved LIHP. Existing law establishes the continuously appropriated LIHP Fund, which consists of moneys transferred to the fund from a participating entity to meet the nonfederal share of estimated payments to the LIHP. This bill would provide that a nondesignated public hospital, as defined, or the entity with which it is affiliated, may be eligible to operate an approved LIHP if it is located in a county that does not have a designated public hospital, as defined, the county does not intend to operate a LIHP, and, if the county previously filed an application to operate a LIHP, the county has formally withdrawn its application. By increasing the number of entities that may transfer funds into the LIHP Fund, this bill would make an appropriation. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.