The Legislature finds and declares that expenditure demands on health service costs at the federal, state, and local level, now, and will in the foreseeable future, exceed available public resources. In order to live within fiscal constraints, the state must develop alternative methods of managing Medi-Cal care that utilizes resources to the maximum advantage of people requiring public medical assistance.

The purposes of the program alternatives described in this chapter are to provide limited implementation and experimentation prior to statewide enactment of these alternative approaches to funding and management of health care services.