Demand Accountability in Healthy Families Plan

“Salt in California’s Wounds” (editorial, Aug. 8) lauded the governor’s expansion of California’s Healthy Families program. This expansion effort lacks any semblance of accountability. The state budget provision signed by the governor would enable adult members living in a family of four that earns 250% of the federal poverty level--approximately $44,000 a year--to become eligible for comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage presently available for low-income children. This budget provision also enables people wanting to take advantage of this taxpayer-subsidized coverage to merely self-certify that they are eligible for the Healthy Families program. There is a bounty hunter provision that pays assisters $50 for every family they enroll in Healthy Families. This could motivate unscrupulous bounty hunters to aggressively recruit applicants clearly ineligible for these benefits.

Demanding some accountability in the Healthy Families program will help ensure that tax dollars taken from individuals and families struggling to make ends meet are not simply handed over to others less deserving.

Lynn Daucher

State Assembly, R-Brea