If people only knew more about Prop 3: Saving Children’s Lives

In so many conversations I have lately, the comment, “If I only knew, or I wish I would have know that earlier” comes up about information related to our health care system, what is available where and the misnomers about how it is all paid for.

Health care issues these days are hot button issues for most of us but when it comes to our children that hot button goes RED HOT and rightfully so.

The problem in the Sacramento area, I have found lately, is people just don’t know how lucky we are to have the ONLY Level 1 Trauma center at UC Davis Hospital in our own backyard. I will admit that until earlier this year, I didn’t either.

The UCDavis Hospital and Children’s Hospital in particular came onto my map in early 08 and has touched me in a way that has changed my life! Okay, I admit the birth of my first child 16 months ago increased the intensity but nonetheless I was amazed I that and had NO CLUE about their capabilities to save lives or fact that it was even IN Sacramento not Davis!

So here is the biggest challenge I see in the next month and we need everyone’s help. We will all benefit in the long run because, who needs our protection more than our children? We have a Proposition out there that has, in my opinion and maybe yours, been lost amongst all the political hype and crazy hardships we all are facing with the stock market and banking system calamity going on. Prop 3 the Children’s Hospital Bond Act, WHEN passed, the will save thousands of children’s lives! But NOBODY can sit on the sidelines with this one.

In a nut shell, Prop 3 is a bond issue vitally for needed improvements to Children’s Hospitals in California including UCDavis Children’s Hospital. The money would be used to jumpstart the construction to expand, remodel and provide the most updated and critical equipment for these hospitals. We’re not talking about $1,000 toilet seats for our government or other wasteful ridiculous spending measures that drive us all crazy. We’re talking about money that will provide the future instruments and facility that may be saving your or my child’s life someday. Everyone always hopes that it is never their child that tragedy befalls yet the beds are full.

UC Davis Children’s Hospital has the region’s only Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) that offers pediatric cardiothoracic surgery services. Currently the PICU is cramped and outdated. The new PICU would be built in a now empty space on the hospital’s 10th floor. Its patient rooms would be twice the size of the rooms in the current PICU there.

Medical director Anthony Philipps says, “Because of the equipment needs that we have and the number of staff to take care of these very sick children, this would be absolutely perfect for our needs.”

The misinterpretation of this Bond issue is possibly the time in which it would need to be repaid. 30 years is the length of time allotted to pay it back. This is not the first time something of this stature was been put to the voters.  In 2004, voters wisely passed Proposition 61, which was a similar children’s hospital bond initiative. UC Davis Children’s Hospital used their share of that money to build a new state-of-the-art NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and have been saving lives more efficiently ever since!

“We’re able to care for children in a much better manner than we were able to in the old one,” Philipps said. “Our families are much happier. The children, I believe do considerably better.

This is a living example of what the bond issue can do says “UC Davis Children’s Hospital, medical director Anthony Philipps.

“I’ve been a pediatrician for 33 years. Children are an investment in our future,” Phillips said.

I agree with Dr. Phillips, we all need to look at this like an INVESTMENT in our children’s future. I vote YES for our children. I hope you will too. 

Please do your part and make sure as many people see this as possible!