A small spending item in Gov. Jerry Brown’s California budget proposal would pay for education about children’s dental care. This might be a sign of a shift in state spending on health care.
Health care advocates often push for investment in disease prevention so costly treatments for advanced illness can be avoided. Anthony Wright of Health Access said that this idea has been missing from the budgets of the past five years.
“Because the budget crisis required legislators and the governor to cut and basically look under every couch cushion for every last quarter to cut, there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for improvements especially on prevention, not the direct service, but some of the more prevention-oriented activities,” he said.
Wright added that he’s pleased this year’s surplus budget has no new cuts to health care. However, he said the current proposal continues billion dollar cuts made to health and human services since 2008.
