Children's Hospitals: For & Against

Children’s Hospital Projects. Grant Program. Bond Act. Initiative Statute.

• Authorizes $750,000,000 in general obligation bonds, to be repaid from state's General Fund, to fund grants to eligible children's hospitals for the construction, expansion, remodeling, renovation, furnishing and equipping of children's hospitals.
• 20 percent of bonds shall be available for grants to certain University of California general acute care hospitals, and 80 percent of the bonds shall be available for grants to other general acute care hospitals whose missions focus on children with illnesses such as leukemia, heart defects, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, and which meet other stated requirements.

Summary of Legislative Analyst’s Estimate of Net State and Local Government Fiscal Impact:

• State cost of about $1.5 billion over 30 years to pay off both the principal ($750 million)and the interest ($756 million) costs of the bonds. Payments of about $50 million per year.

California Children's Hospitals treat children with the most serious and deadly diseases like LEUKEMIA, CANCER, HEART DEFECTS, SICKLE CELL ANEMIA, DIABETES, AND CYSTIC FIBROSIS.

Over 1 million times last year, children facing life-threatening illness or injury were cared for at regional Children's Hospitals without regard to a family's income or ability to pay. Children are referred to these pediatric centers of excellence for treatment by other hospitals in California.

Children's Hospitals save hundreds of children's lives every day. Many children are cured. Others have their young lives extended for many years. And all have the quality of their lives improved.

We know. Our children have all been cared for at a California Children's Hospital.

Proposition 61, the CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL BOND, will help make room in these wonderful hospitals to treat the children who need care.

Proposition 61 DOES NOT RAISE TAXES. The bonds will be repaid from the existing State budget.

Proposition 61 FUNDS WILL ALLOW CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS TO INCREASE BED CAPACITY TO ENSURE THAT SICK AND INJURED CHILDREN HAVE ACCESS TO A REGIONAL FACILITY where they can receive the kind of care that our children got. Children's Hospitals' emergency rooms are critically overcrowded and need enough capacity to handle the seriously ill and injured children sent to them.

Regional Children's Hospitals provide specialized care to children through California. For example:

• 87% of the inpatient care for children who need heart surgery;
• 95% of all surgery for children who need organ transplants;
• More than 64% of the inpatient care for children with cancer.

The nation's premier pediatric research centers are in Children's Hospitals, making them the source of medical discoveries and advancements that benefit all children. Today, almost 90% of children born with heart defects can be cured or helped considerably by surgery. The survival rate of children with leukemia is now greater than 80 percent.

PROPOSITION 61 WILL ALLOW CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS TO PURCHASE THE LATEST MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES and special equipment for sick babies born prematurely, seriously underweight, or with defective organs. These non-profit hospitals need our help!

Children with Heart Disease or Cystic Fibrosis or Cancer have to be admitted over and over to a Children's Hospital to stabilize and treat their life-threatening and debilitating illnesses. Children's Hospitals have the specialists to improve the quality for those kids' lives, helping them to stay at home and stay in school. THE MOST SERIOUSLY ILL AND INJURED CHILDREN ARE BEING SAVED EVERY DAY AT A CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL!

The doctors, nurses and staff at Children's Hospitals are unlikely any other people you will ever meet. Their lives are dedicated to a mission. And that mission is to treat children with the most serious and deadly diseases like Leukemia, Cancer, Heart Defects, Sickle Cell Anemia, Diabetes, and Cystic Fibrosis.

Please join our families and millions of others whose children need California Children's Hospitals. PLEASE VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 61.

TRENT DILFER, Parent

ERIKA FIGUEROA, Parent

DAVID LIU, Parent

Rebuilding hospitals can make some select contractors rich – but it does not guarantee health care for anyone.

The principal problem in California—and across America—is that we have an estimated 44 million legal residents (including children) who have no health insurance and tens of millions more who have inadequate coverage.

Persons without adequate health insurance delay seeking care (until they end up in expensive emergency rooms) and government-operated hospitals, as well as the many so-called "non-profit" corporations that run most hospitals, seek to charge the uninsured up to 3 times the rates negotiated by public and private insurers.

The current health care system in California and in our country is littered with middlemen and profiteers who steal limited resources from actual care.

Put differently, the current system is wasteful and unfair. We need a "single-payer" health care system in which every legal resident receives basic health coverage.

In a political system ludicrously dependent upon private campaign contributions, entrenched special interests are able to give money to our elected officials so that their special interests are preserved or enhanced.

If we continue to have a national government beholden to the rich, the California Legislature should establish or offer voters a statewide "single-payer" system in which persons can have more or less insurance - but every legal resident has some insurance.

Closing our eyes to the real problems will NOT make California or America safer or better.

GARY B. WESLEY, Attorney at Law

California voters have already approved billions of dollars in bond sales and have mortgaged the future.

The Legislature can always come up with yet another "motherhood and apple pie" project that would be nice.

However, raising the money (at this time of deficits and high debt) by more borrowing is not responsible.

Not only the principal but also decades of interest would have to be repaid.

GARY B. WESLEY, Attorney at Law

We've never heard of this attorney who opposes Proposition 61. Have you?

He says that Proposition 61 will hurt California's future. He's wrong.

PROPOSITION 61 WILL GIVE THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SICK KIDS A CHANCE TO HAVE A FUTURE--beat their illnesses and live long and happy lives.

Many mothers of critically ill children worked hard to collect the signatures to put the Children's Hospital Bond on your ballot because California's Children's Hospitals save lives every single day!

Children with leukemia, cancer, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and heart disease. Children who are severely injured in car wrecks and house fires.

Thanks to the miraculous work, the finest pediatric research and the loving care kids get at California's Children's Hospitals survival rate are improving dramatically.

Today, 80% of children with leukemia are making it and 90% survive delicate heart surgery.

This attorney tries to make a joke out of Proposition 61 by calling it a "motherhood issue".

It is a "motherhood issue." And AS MOTHERS AND FATHERS OF VERY SICK KIDS WE ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES.

Please vote YES on Proposition 61, the Children's Hospital Bond.

JENNIFER HUMMER, Parent

DAVID LIU, Parent

DEBBIE CERVANTES, Parent