While we are holding our children closer in the wake of recent tragic events, it’s a good time to focus on what we can do to make sure that all the children in California have the best chance to stay healthy and safe. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how the state’s planned cuts in Medi-Cal reimbursement rates threaten the health of many California children and families.

It’s simple: These cuts will make it even more difficult for working-poor parents to find doctors and other health care providers that can afford to care for them and their children.

So it was alarming, after a December federal court ruling that allows California to make the Medi-Cal rate cuts, to hear the governor’s office describe already absurdly low reimbursements to doctors and health care providers as “unnecessary costs.”

The doctors who still take low-income Medi-Cal patients are reimbursed for their services at 1985 rates, among the lowest in the nation. They certainly can’t afford to have those reimbursement rates cut again just before 900,000 more children enter the Medi-Cal system in 2014 as health care reform is implemented.

The California Medical Association has said that the proposed 10 percent rate cuts will mean that doctors will be reimbursed only $11 per Medi-Cal patient visit even though it costs three times that to provide the service and meet overhead costs. Consider what Dr. William Lewis, past president of the Santa Clara County Medical Association, told this newspaper last summer about the plight of Medi-Cal patients:

“If they can get established with a physician at all, they have to wait much longer for an appointment and as a result, they are going to the emergency room for routine care that clogs up the ER. This is clearly going to get worse if you’re adding people without adding doctors.”

Is this the best we can do for hardworking, low-income parents and their children? During my 12 years in the state Legislature, I was honored to work on legislation that improved the lives of children, including the Healthy Families health coverage plan that will now be taken over by Medi-Cal. Legislators passed Healthy Families because we knew that assuring that every child is healthy would ultimately strengthen our state. Any further rate cuts to health care providers who treat and care for our children is a blow to the health of our communities.

When the Legislature first approved Medi-Cal rate cuts in 2011, California was in a much more serious financial bind than it is now. In November, voters passed tax initiatives, such as Proposition 30, to support the health and education of all the state’s children. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California strongly backed these initiatives because the well-being of families is our priority.

We are asking the Legislature and Governor Brown not to implement Medi-Cal rate reductions. They would be especially cruel now that many previously uninsured Californians finally can participate in Medi-Cal, when health care reform is phased in during the coming year.

Investing in all of the children who live in California isn’t just a “cost,” it’s our responsibility. And it is absolutely necessary.

Liz Figueroa, a retired state senator, is vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte. She wrote this for this newspaper.