My name is Dr. Hector Flores.  I am the medical director for a group called Family Care Specialists in East Los Angeles.  We serve about 40,000 patients.  We have 22 physicians in our practice.  And about half of those patients are low-income families.  Most are covered by the Medi-Cal program.  About 10 percent are uninsured. 

One of the challenges we have today is finding access to care for our Medi-Cal and uninsured patients.  We have very few specialists to choose from in East Los Angeles.  It’s an underserved area.  Our specialists are really overworked, and they have trouble providing discounted care or free care to our uninsured patients, and they really find that Medi-Cal reimbursement is not adequate for them to maintain their practices.

What I welcome in the health care reform movement is to expand coverage to more patients so that we have few uninsured amongst our ranks and, number two, to improve the Medi-Cal reimbursement so that it will ultimately improve access to specialty care for our patients. 

These physicians are excellent physicians.  We just need to provide them the resources to continue to provide the care for our patients.