Christine Jordan Sexton
Senate President Andy Gardiner made an appearance at the A Healthy Florida Works press conference on Tuesday, joining a group of business leaders supporting his chamber’s plan to draw down Medicaid dollars and provide access to health care for as many as 800,000 uninsured Floridians.
With less than three weeks left in the 2015 regular session, the group called on the Florida House of Representatives to join the Florida Senate and support a Medicaid expansion as proposed in Senate bill, CS/SB 7044. The so-called FHIX program borrows heavily from the principles advocated by A Healthy Florida Works and would expand Medicaid to low-income Floridians but also would have work requirements and co-payments for services.
When Gardiner went to the podium to speak, the crowd — which included the chief executive officers of some of Florida’s biggest hospitals — gave lengthy applause.
Gardiner told the crowd that the Senate is willing to “sit at the table and talk to anybody at any time.”
Health care has been a divisive issue this session, due in large part to the pending elimination of $2 billion in Medicaid supplemental dollars known as Low Income Pool. LIP expires this summer and the state has been negotiating with the federal government on trying to get it expanded. LIP is used to help reduce the burden of uncompensated care but also is targeted toward graduate medical education, federally qualified health centers and Medicaid HMOs.
Florida has not implemented a Medicaid expansion as envisioned in the federal health care law, often called Obamacare. As the state has tried to renegotiate the Medicaid LIP dollars the federal government has made clear that there is a nexus between LIP and Medicaid expansion.
As a result, the Senate has proposed a Medicaid expansion and has in its budget both LIP dollars and $3.8 million in federal money for Medicaid expansion. The House budget contains neither.
With 18 days left in the regular session the chambers have been unable to agree on a spending plan and have not been negotiating the differences. Talk of the session not being completed on time has grown louder.
In the meantime, negotiations between the Agency for Health Care and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Low Income Pool negotiations have come to a standstill with the state accusing the federal government of refusing to meet.
Gardiner wasn’t alone at the press conference. He brought some of the most influential senators: Sen. Tom Lee, the Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman; Sen. Bill Galvano, the Senate Majority Leader; Sen. Aaron Bean, the Senate Health Policy Committee Chairman; Sen. Garrett Richter, Senate Pro Tempore; and Sen. Rene Garcia, chairman of the health care spending appropriations subcommittee.
Gardiner did make a joke at his own expense. saying he’s not the Senate president, he’s “just the travel agent for Garrett and Rene.”
Both the governor’s office and the House of Representatives have criticized the trip the senators took to Baltimore to discuss how LIP negotiations had been going.
