The proposed State budget that was offered to the New Jersey Legislature in late February proposes to cut at least $143 million from the charity care program. This represents a 20 percent reduction from the $716 million in last year's budget that provides care to our state's 1.3 million uninsured residents.  Additionally, the budget proposal proposes a $45 million cut which amounts to $90 million when you include dollar-for-dollar federal matching funds to Medicaid funding for nursing homes. There is also a $10 million reduction to Graduate Medical Education funding for teaching hospitals.

The cut comes at a time when New Jersey hospitals are struggling financially due to chronic government underfunding. In the past 12 months alone, six New Jersey acute care hospitals have closed, three more have announced plans to close and five others have filed for bankruptcy protection. Of the hospitals that remain, nearly half are losing money. We fear that if this proposal is enacted, we will see a rash of additional unplanned hospital closures. Even the state's health commissioner recently acknowledged that more hospitals will close as a result of this budget. Each hospital that closes takes an average of 1,700 jobs along with it. This is shocking considering hospitals are the second largest employer in the state.

The Governor also said that one of his priorities in this year's challenging budget is to protect those at risk. Charity care is designed to protect the working poor of New Jersey who can't afford health insurance. State law requires that hospitals provide that care. Unfortunately, in this budget, I believe the state is dodging its share of the responsibility by dramatically cutting its financial obligation.

The Chamber is concerned about these cuts and ask the State to help us protect those vulnerable while keeping our hospitals and others throughout the state strong. These cuts may seriously damage our local hospitals already precarious financial situation, and make it very difficult to sustain high quality care and accessibility to modern and efficient health care facilities for the patients of our community.

We encourage the Governor to restore the proposed cuts to charity care in the FY09 budget. He will truly protect our state's most vulnerable residents by finding a budget solution that contains no healthcare cuts.

Gov. Jon Corzine will sign the paid family leave bill into law on Friday, May 2 in a statehouse ceremony. New Jersey will become the second state, after California, to offer workers six weeks of paid leave to care for newborns or seriously ill immediate family members.

Supporters of the bill say it will help workers balance their work and family life. Business lobbyists and other critics argue that employers-especially small ones like doctors' offices and car repair shops-cannot afford to lose key workers for up to six weeks at a time. The critics say that becoming the first state in the region to mandate paid leave would further damage the state's image as a place to do business.

Under the controversial bill, workers would get two-thirds of their regular pay, up to $524 per week. Employees could collect the money for up to six weeks and employers would have the option of requiring the workers to first take two weeks of fully paid vacation or sick leave.

The program would be funded by workers, who would pay about 75 cents a week more into the existing state Temporary Disability Insurance fund through payroll deductions.

That translates into about $35 per year.

State and federal law now entitles workers to 12 weeks of family leave, but it is unpaid and employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempt. While the new paid family leave bill covers all employers, those with fewer than 50 employees are not required to hold open jobs for workers on paid leave.

Payroll deductions would start on Jan. 1, 2009, with workers able to take paid leave starting July 1, 2009, according to the bill.

The bill is modeled after a three-year-old California law that offers six weeks of paid leave at 55 percent of the worker's pay, with a cap of $840 per week.

Washington state recently adopted a more modest program that offers five weeks of paid leave up to a maximum of $250 per week, but a definitive start date has not been set. New York and Massachusetts are also considering bills mandating paid family leave.