The Asian American community Monday joined other minority communities to voice its

The Asian American community Monday joined other minority communities to voice its strong opposition to the proposed 2 billion U.S. dollars in cuts to health and human services programs in California.

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, said in a statement Monday that the state budget cuts would harm low-income families and called upon the public to contact California state legislators to voice their opposition to the cuts.

“California is recovering from a recession, and now safety net programs that are a lifeline to low-income and working families, are being further threatened,” said APALC Policy Director Betty Hung.

“We must not balance the state budget on the backs of vulnerable Californians,” Hung added.

“The 1.2 billion-dollar proposed cuts to the health programs will devastate what is left of existing health programs after suffering from repeated cuts year after year,” said APALC Health Access Project Director Doreena Wong.

“This is particularly unwise given federal and state efforts to expand health coverage through health care reform by 2014,” Wong added.

In his May budget revision, California Governor Jerry Brown has proposed cutting 1.2 billion dollars from Medi-Cal, a health program for low-income individuals, and almost 880 million dollars from CalWORKs, a program that provides basic assistance mostly for poor children.

About half a million Medi-Cal recipients and 35,208 CalWORKs cases involve individuals of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander descent, according to APALC.

APALC, along with Asian Law Caucus (ALC), another member of Advancing Justice, and Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) have launched action alerts asking community members to contact legislators to dissuade them from enacting the cuts.

The proposed cuts include reducing supplemental payments to private hospitals, along with elimination of public hospital grants and stopping increases to managed care plans for some supplemental public hospital payments.

It would take back the 2.4 percent rate increase to nursing homes, and keep the 1 percent set-aside for supplemental payments.

It would cut In-Home Supportive Services by 7 percent, across the board. The plan also includes eliminating payment for household services, such as shopping and meal preparation, from shared living arrangements.

The Latino community has already voiced its opposition to the cuts. The Latino Health Alliance said the cuts would impact over 2.5 million Latinos state-wide.

The alliance said access to primary care has already been negatively impacted by hundreds of millions of dollars in Medi-Cal cuts and it believes that this cut will greatly restrict patient access and lead to health center closures in communities they are most needed.

CalWORKs is California’s welfare-to-work program, which provides cash assistance for families and helps single mothers with child care and job training.

CalWORKs provides temporary assistance such as a cash grant and job training and promotes self-sufficiency through a combination of work requirements and personal accountability.

In addition, the CalWORKs program is a critical component of California’s safety net. Many families on CalWORKs receive supplemental services such as domestic violence counseling in order to address basic needs and skills while they work their way to self sufficiency, according to the alliance.

During this economic downturn, many families have turned to the CalWORKs program to meet their basic needs while they continue to look for a job or engage in job training, the alliance said.

Unfortunately, the governor proposes deep cuts to the program that serves the most vulnerable individuals in California, according to the Latino Health Alliance.

Meanwhile on Monday, a new state task force will begin deliberations on developing a 10-year plan to make Californians healthier and help control health care costs.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley will co-chair the task force with Dr. Don Berwick, former president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and a noted advocate of patient reforms.

The first meeting of the “Let’s Get Healthy California Task Force” and a related Expert Advisory Committee will kick off additional discussions over the next six months. The focus would implement California Governor Brown’s Executive Order on making Californians healthier.