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February 12, 2004

Romney’s health budget under fire

Jeremy Schwab

Health and Human Services Secretary Ron Preston faced the gauntlet of state legislators and invited them to take a broad look at Governor Mitt Romney’s proposed budget.

“If you look across that budget, you will see no major programs eliminated,” said Preston. “We originally thought we’d have to eliminate big parts of Common Health. But there are no Medicare eligibility losses in this budget.”

Preston told the legislators and the crowd at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center last week that he had convinced Romney to increase the overall Health and Human Services spending by $523 million this coming year, after Romney had asked asked if a lower increase would be feasible.

Preston’s defense of the budget came just days after Sen. Dianne Wilkerson blasted Romney for proposing to eliminate funds for the prevention of prostate cancer, a disease which disproportionately harms black men.

Public health advocates also criticized the governor’s proposed budget for eliminating funding for school nurses and community health centers and cutting teen pregnancy prevention money by half.

“We are especially concerned about cuts that disproportionately affect communities of color, such as cuts to AIDS/HIV prevention programs, teen pregnancy and school health programs,” said Daniel Delaney of Health Care for All.

Preston defended the proposed budget.

“It’s not just here’s a little agency and he’s flying his flag,” said Preston. “We need to figure out how best to take pieces from various places and get things done.”

In the proposed budget, all $12 million would be eliminated for school health services and all $7 million would be cut from community health centers and community health managed care. A further $1.7 would be cut from prevention and treatment of AIDS, a disease which is spreading rapidly in communities of color.

Wilkerson, who led the Ways and Means Committee hearing, questioned whether the cuts might not cost the state more money down the road as people end up in emergency rooms instead of receiving preventative care.

“How much is this going to cost us?” she asked.

Preston discounted the argument that eliminating preventative programs automatically raises costs elsewhere.

“People are always very fast to say if you eliminate this thing over here, you increase costs,” he said.

But he admitted that he did not know whether the program cuts would increase costs in the long run.

“Hard info on all these things right now is very hard to have.”

Many public health programs have been eliminated or severely cut in recent state budgets, as the cost of health care balloons. Last year, domestic violence prevention was eliminated, and in the past four years $48 million, or 95 percent, has been trimmed from the anti-smoking program.

But Preston said that the governor also had a few new programs added to the budget.

The governor wants to add $1 million for cell phones with geo-positioning to protect social workers. Romney also proposed adding money for the Department of Transitional Assistance to provide better programming for girls, and funding for homeless shelters to get more people out of hotels. Preston did not say how much either of these two initiatives would cost.

The Ways and Means committee plans to hold eight more hearings in different members’ districts over the next two months to gather input on the budget.

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