Opinion Pieces Address Ballot Measure To Fund Children’s Hospitals
Two recent opinion pieces address Proposition 61, a bond measure on the Nov. 2 statewide ballot that would provide funding to children's hospitals. Proposition 61 would provide $750 million to pay for construction, expansion and equipment for children's hospitals. Including interest, the measure would cost about $1.5 billion over 30 years (California Healthline, 10/22). Summaries appear below.
- Zareh Sarrafian, Riverside Press-Enterprise: Proposition 61 "would go a long way toward helping children's hospitals" expand capacity, "acquire new equipment and respond to the call for cutting-edge technology to offer patients the advantages afforded by modern health care," Sarrafian, an administrator at Loma Linda University Children's Hospital, writes in a Press-Enterprise opinion piece. Sarrafian concludes that the "extraordinary care and life-saving research at children's hospitals throughout the state make Prop. 61 the right choice for ... all Californians" (Sarrafian, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 10/24).
- Jon Coupal, San Francisco Chronicle: If California residents "continue to support fiscally irresponsible bond proposals," then "every man, woman and child ... will face a future of debt and drain unlike any we have ever seen," Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, writes in a Chronicle opinion piece. According to Coupal, the "problem" is that many bond measures, including Proposition 61, have "very sympathetic titles," but "reasonable people can come up with hundreds, even thousands of 'worthy' causes." State residents "need to understand that a vote against Prop. 61 is not a vote against such programs but, rather, a vote for better uses of existing resources," he continues. Coupal writes that although funding children's hospitals may be "meritorious, it does not change the fact that California is already saddled with a dangerously high level of debt," and Californians need to "say 'no' when tempted to spend more than we have" (Coupal, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/26).