Christine Jordan Sexton
Gov. Rick Scott unveiled what appears to be an ambitious health care agenda he plans on tackling before July 1.
Although the governor didn’t have a health care agenda going into the 2015 session, Scott announced one in a news release Thursday. He vowed to develop a Commission on Healthcare and Hospital Funding that will, among other things, examine eliminating Florida’s certificate of need laws. Certificate of need is a regulatory program to curb the growth in heatlh care expenditures by limiting the proliferation of high-cost services and goods.
He also wants to start work on an interim budget for the 2015-16 year that contains no Low Income Pool funding or any additional federal Medicaid dollars for expansion of health care to 800,000 low-income working Floridians.
Scott said deleting the CON laws would increase competition among health care providers, reduce hospital costs and therefore lower hospitals’ needs for federal funding, “a win-win for Florida taxpayers.” Scott said that decreasing costs is the best way of increasing access to health care.
The release also hints that there are other alternatives to increase access to health care other than expanding Medicaid under the federal health care law, often referred to as Obamacare.
There “are other ideas we could begin to explore to increase access to healthcare, including having the federal government give the state a 100 percent federally funded block grant to develop a flexible program that meets the unique needs of Florida’s population.”
Scott has been releasing information about the commission for the past several days. The latest release, though, still doesn’t say who will serve on the commission or when it will start meeting. Scott does say, though, it will have to begin its work “in the weeks ahead and gather information that could inform the building of of a budget before July 1.”
Health care financing — the continuation of the Low Income Pool program and Medicaid expansion — were the driving forces leading to the 2015 Legislative Session’s cratering this week. The one must-pass bill of the Session — the General Appropriations Act — was not crafted because the House and Senate couldn’t overcome a more than $4 billion difference in their proposed spending plans.
The loggerhead arose because the Senate budget included money for Medicaid expansion as envisioned under Obamacare, as well as $2 billion in Low Income Pool funding while the House budget contained neither. LIP is supplemental Medicaid funding, made possible by a 1115 waiver, that allows Florida to operate a statewide mandatory Medicaid managed-care program. Florida has submitted a proposed amendment to its 1115 waiver and the Agency for Health Care Administration is seeking public testimony on the waiver amendment.
Scott’s release expressed his hope that the Obama administration will approve Florida’s amendment to extend the LIP program.
“However,” it reads, “we should begin preparing a budget in the interim that could be taken up in a special session without any LIP funding and without any expansion of Obamacare. I look forward to continuing to work with Senate and House leaders in the weeks ahead to address critical funding needs and identify when and how we can direct over $1 billion in surplus state tax revenue back to the Florida citizens who earned it. After all, this is their money – not government’s”
