Health: hospitals: Medi-Cal.

Existing law establishes the Medi-Cal program, administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which basic health care services are provided to qualified low-income persons. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid provisions. Existing law establishes the continuously appropriated Health Care Deposit Fund from which expenditures of state, county, and federal funds for health care and administration under the Medi-Cal program are made as specified. Existing law authorizes the department to accept any elective transfer of funds from a county, political subdivision, or other governmental entity, and provides the department with the discretion of whether or not to deposit the transferred funds into the Medi-Cal Inpatient Payment Adjustment Fund, which is continuously appropriated and consists of moneys transferred to the fund to be used as the nonfederal share of payment adjustments made to hospitals under the Medi-Cal program. This bill would require the department to establish, implement, and maintain the Nondesignated Public Hospital Intergovernmental Transfer Program, as specified, to assist nondesignated public hospitals in achieving federal financial participation to the fullest extent permitted by federal law. This bill would provide that a transferring entity, as defined, may agree to transfer its intergovernmental transfer allocation, as defined, to the state in accordance with the program and would require the state to deposit the transferred funds into the Medi-Cal Inpatient Payment Adjustment Fund. This bill would require funds transferred into the Medi-Cal Inpatient Payment Adjustment Fund to be, in part, transferred to the Health Care Deposit Fund for specified purposes. By increasing the amount of moneys that may be deposited into the Medi-Cal Inpatient Payment Adjustment Fund and the Health Care Deposit Fund, and by revising the purposes for which moneys in those funds shall be used, this bill would make an appropriation. This bill would authorize the state to retain 9% of each intergovernmental transfer amount to reimburse the department, or to transfer to the General Fund, for the administrative costs of operating the program and for the benefit of Medi-Cal children's health programs. This bill would appropriate $1,500,000,000 from the Hospital Quality Assurance Revenue Fund and $1,500,000,000 from the Federal Trust Fund to the department to be available for expenditure for specified purposes until January 1, 2014. This bill would become operative only if SB 90 of the 2011–12 Regular Session of the Legislature is enacted. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.