Gov. Jerry Brown Monday vetoed a bill that would have kept the Adult Day Health Care system operating for 37,000 disabled and elderly state residents.
Brown had cut the funding from the program in the current state budget to help offset a huge budget deficit. But separate legislation would have revised the program and kept it going.
The intent was to prevent the elderly and disabled from moving into more expensive nursing homes.
From Daniel Weintraub at HealthyCal.org:
In his veto message, Brown said the new program, while requiring less funding at first, would essentially be a duplicate of the one he was eliminating. He said he didn’t see the point of doing that.
The new program would have been known as KAFI — for Keeping Adults Free from Institutions.
“While my administration deeply shares the goal of ‘Keeping Adults Free from Institutions,’ creating a new [Adult Day Health Care] look-alike program at this juncture is unnecessary and untimely,” Brown wrote. “It does not address the immediate need to transition ADHC beneficiaries to other home and community-based services that can meet their needs, and would cause confusion for both consumers and providers.”
Brown said his administration would extend the elimination of the Adult Day Health Care program from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1 to give the centers, their clients, advocates, legislators and the Health Services Department time to ensure that everyone who needs services to remain free of a nursing home gets them.
Lydia Missaelides, executive director of the California Association for Adult Day Services, has said 300 Adult Day Health Care programs throughout California are in danger of closing.
Brown signed legislation that allows the programs to remain accredited, even without MediCal funding, if they can attract enough private patients to stay in business.