Speak your Piece
Just last week during Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget revision presentation he spoke glowingly about California’s rural areas. Despite the praise, rural areas of this state are often forgotten, especially in policy discussions. Earlier this legislative session, state Sen. Maria Durazo introduced SB 525, which if signed into law, will increase the minimum wage for health care workers to $25 an hour.
Shasta Community Health Center supports higher wages for our employees but calls on the governor and Legislature to take a more nuanced approach to this complex subject and consider the real and unique differences between rural and urban parts of the state and not approve another unfunded mandate that could undermine health care delivery in rural California.
Instead, the governor and the Legislature should focus on investing more funding immediately into Medi-Cal. The shortages of physicians and other health professionals in the rural parts of our state like ours, is partially due to how little Medi-Cal pays compounded by the high percentage of those covered under Medi-Cal in our region.
That said, rural nonprofit health centers cannot survive an unfunded mandate like SB 525 that also extends to private health care providers. The estimated costs, of this unfunded mandate, to Shasta Community Health Center, is north of $10 million annually, about 20% of our total budget. That's because to maintain internal wage fairness for all staff, wage increases would be required...
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