Santa Rosa demonstrators decry proposed cuts to health care

<p>A small but spirited group of demonstrators held a rally at Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square on Wednesday evening, blasting proposed state budget cuts to both HIV prevention programs and subsidized health insurance for children.</p><p>As part of his effort to close the $24 billion budget gap, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed the elimination of the state AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP, as well as funding for the state Office of AIDS. The cuts would save $80.1 million.</p><p>“If we lose (ADAP), people will stop taking their meds, they will become more infectious and new cases will rise, and they will die early deaths,” said Sister Frances A. Sissy of the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.</p><p>Representatives of local health care clinics attended the rally and called for the state to back off a proposal that would eliminate Healthy Families, a low-cost health insurance program for kids whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal, but not enough to purchase private insurance.</p><p>With the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence singing backup, Julie Weiner, a registered nurse at the Occidental Area Health Center, belted out a rally song to the tune of “ABC” by the Jackson 5.</p><p>Cheryl Negrin, a nurse practitioner at the Phoenix Teen Health Clinic in Petaluma, said there were 12,000 kids in Sonoma County covered by Healthy Families: “Where will those children go?”</p><p>Negrin said the governor has also proposed eliminating the state Office of Family Planning, a move that will, among other things, result in a greater number of unwanted pregnancies.</p><p>“Abortions will be on the rise,” Negrin said. “That is the only thing that we know has gone down” because of state-funded family planning programs.</p><p>Karin Adams, one of two principal organizers of the rally, said the county stands to lose about $1.5 million in HIV program funding if Schwarzenegger’s cuts are approved. She said it would be difficult to find alternative sources of funding to make up for such cuts.</p><p>“We’ve lost grants that we used to receive,” said Adams, who works in the health services department at the Drug Abuse Alternatives Center in Santa Rosa. “Everything is much more competitive and the county is not going to be able to cover us this time.”</p><p>When asked where state cuts should be made if not to HIV programs, she said she didn’t know.</p><p>Giuseppe Cavaleri,the other organizer of the rally, said a good place to start would be “tax incentives for new prisons.”</p><p>The event drew a crowd of about 150, but the masses that flocked to the Santa Rosa Downtown Market just a few yards away seemed to keep their distance.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.</p>