Monday, May 19, 2008

Medi-Cal cuts

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of the State of California. He also happens to be a fellow parishioner at Saint Monica's Church in Santa Monica. His heart surgeon was the same Dr Starnes who repaired Reuben's heart and Reuben's initial nursery after birth was named in honour of Arnold's wife, Maria Shriver.

And now we receive a letter this morning saying that our at home nursing (with the face of Christine whom we searched 4 long months to find) is facing a 10% Medi-Cal cut in order to reconcile state budget shortfalls, and thus imposed by Arnold with the result that come July, our nursing provider will have to make the choice between running at a loss in providing care to Medi-cal clients or discontinuing service to Medi-Cal clients like Reuben.

For those of you who've followed the journey, you'll know we changed to American Private Duty in February after leaving the Maxim nursing agency which churned out a plethora of nurses accustomed to sleeping on the job, asking if they could drink wine, no shows, leaving Reuben on the changing mat and other misdemeanours which were a shame to their profession. Soon after, we found Christine and she's been compassionately helping to care for Reuben ever since.

There are so many battles to be won regarding healthcare in the US, indeed there have been throughout the last 12 months, battling with the 3" file of medical bills when we should have been focusing solely on Reuben's life, battling with finding a competent nurse (we gave up on night nursing), battling with medical supply companies when they failed to deliver life saving equipment). It's been very painful. This is just another of the hurdles to climb.

I have a lot of letters to write this morning before our flight tonight...

We ask for your help:
http:/gov.ca.gov/interact#contact
in joining the petition against these Medi-Cal cuts.

3 comments:

Amélie said...

Catherine it is dreadful...just as bad in the UK if you dont mind me saying...We had to file an official complaint as we got no night support. Amélie's sats alarms between 30 and 241 times per night we got no sleep, it was not until I started ranting to go public to MP's etc that a nurse was put in alternate nigths, and even worse the form stated reasons for support 'death due to hypoxic event' and 'damage to trust reputation' the latter infuriated me!

I hope you can get this cleared up for all your sakes especially with a new baby on the way x

Unknown said...

wow how sad im wondering if you could ask christine as you like her so much to do a few days aweek out of work till u get things sorted weve done that with my old nrused theyd look after me when mum and dad went out hugs ellen

Unknown said...

just reading bak over this and wondering weather he relise4s his old dr operated on a person who needs medi cal and would he have made the changes then hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm interesint idea well who knows with them polis rite out here they would care if the dr operated on soemone that used something they do it anyway i got two schools closed coz stupid polis so hah hugs ellen xxxxxxx