§ 1179.50

(a) This part shall be known and may be cited as the Children’s Hospital Bond Act of 2008.

(b) California’s network of regional children’s hospitals provide vital health care services to children facing life-threatening illness or injury. Over one million times each year, children are cared for at these hospitals without regard to their family’s ability to pay.

(c) Children’s hospitals also provide specialized treatment and care that has increased the survival of children suffering from serious diseases and illnesses such as childhood leukemia, cancer, heart defects, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis.

(d) Children’s hospitals also provide essential training for pediatricians, pediatric specialists and others who treat children, and they conduct critically important medical research that benefits all of California’s children.

(e) However, the burden of providing uncompensated care and the increasing costs of health care seriously impair our children’s hospitals’ ability to modernize and expand their facilities and to purchase the latest medical technologies and special medical equipment necessary to take care of sick children.

(f) Therefore, the people desire to provide a steady and ready source of funds for capital improvement programs for children’s hospitals to improve the health, welfare, and safety of California’s children.

(Added November 4, 2008, by initiative Proposition 3.)