Governor’s Help Sought on Medicaid Rule Waiver

LOS ANGELES â€”  State officials have canceled a crucial meeting in Washington that had been scheduled for today on renewing the federal waiver that keeps Los Angeles County’s health care system afloat.

The action led the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to send a letter to the governor urging him to aid them in extending the $1-billion plan.

If the waiver is not renewed before the current one expires June 30, the county could face a $250-million hole in its new budget and the possible need to shut public hospitals or clinics that serve the county’s growing numbers of uninsured.

County officials initially expected the renewal to go smoothly and be completed by last week. But the federal government has asked both the county and the state, newly flush with tax revenues and other money from the economic expansion, to shoulder more of the cost of the waiver of federal Medicaid rules.

The county has offered to kick in $60 million, nearly half the money it expects to receive annually as part of the national settlement of lawsuits against the tobacco industry. But the state has not yet forwarded that proposal to the federal government, and this week canceled the meeting in which officials from Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington were to discuss the renewal.