I joined approximately 800 passionate activists in downtown Los Angeles last night to protest Governor Schwarzenegger’s unilateral line item veto of critical HIV/AIDS services that help save Californians at risk for HIV and AIDS. Aside from the callousness of denying care to people who need it, his shortsighted action is at best “penny wise and pound foolish.” Patients who lose these services will have nowhere to go but emergency rooms when they get sick because their assistance was cut by Schwarzenegger.

California law expressly forbids an emergency room from turning away patients, regardless of their ability to pay, and an ER visit typically costs anywhere from four to ten times as much as a regular doctor’s office visit. This means hospitals will have to pick up this very costly slack, resulting in price increases passed on to the consumer and/or government in the case of publicly financed institutions. This will also increase waiting times for other ER patients. This is spectacularly bad public health policy that must be rescinded as quickly as possible

Read the story and see images from the protest at IndyMedia Los Angeles