Health-Related Measures Qualify for Ballot

CAL/AAEM News Service calaaem_news at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 29 13:12:06 PDT 2006


Health-Related Measures Qualify for Ballot

Source: California Healthline (http://www.californiahealthline.org)
Date: June 21, 2006
 

A measure to increase the state tobacco tax to fund children's health
insurance and other programs qualified this week for the November ballot, the
San Jose Mercury News reports.

Supporters of the measure estimate that the $2.60 tax increase would generate
$2.1 billion annually to provide:

$758 million for hospital emergency care;

$371 million for children's health insurance;

$267 million for cancer, heart, asthma and other disease programs;

$177 million for tobacco prevention and educations; and

$96.5 million for tobacco-related disease research.


Parental Notification
A measure that would require parental notification before a girl can have an
abortion also qualified for the ballot. The measure is nearly identical to
Proposition 73, which voters rejected 53% to 47% in the November 2005 special
election (Zapler, San Jose Mercury News, 6/21).

However, unlike the 2005 ballot measure, the measure that will appear on the
2006 ballot does not define abortion as the termination of "a child conceived,
but not yet born." The current initiative also would require statistics on the
number of judicial waivers requested, declined or granted, to be reported based
on county, whereas the 2005 initiative would have required such information to
be reported for each judge in the state (Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle,
6/21).

The measure would require that parents or a legal guardian be notified 48 hours
before a girl can have an abortion. Girls who are married, emancipated or are
active members of the armed forces would be exempt (San Jose Mercury News,
6/21).

So far, 10 measures have qualified for the November ballot, and several are
still awaiting approval before the June 29 deadline (San Francisco Chronicle,
6/21). 


For more information, please visit:
http://www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=122575



Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service
University of California, Irvine

The CAL/AAEM Archives are available at: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/


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