Christine Jordan Sexton
Supplemental Medicaid funding and whether Florida should expand health care access to 800,000 uninsured working Floridians was the issue that brought the 2015 session to a grinding halt.
In Orlando, though, the issue of Low Income Pool funding and Medicaid expansion didn’t draw crowds as the Agency for Health Care Administration held the first of three public meetings on a proposed amendment to the 1115 waiver that allows the LIP program to operate.
Though scheduled to last two hours just a handful of people spoke. Deputy Secretary for Medicaid, Justin Senior, spoke for nearly half of the meeting — which lasted slightly more than one hour — presenting the proposed amendment to extend the Low Income Pool.
Most of those who presented at the meeting were health care industry affiliates, either with a hospital, medical society, federally qualified health center or even with graduate medical education.
All comments supported maintaining the Low Income Pool the supplemental funding makes available under the Medicaid 1115 waiver that allows Florida to operate a statewide mandatory managed-care program.
Vonda Sexton, Nemours Children’s Hospital’s managing director of strategy and business development, testified that if the LIP program were to be eliminated the facility, which provides $111 million in uncompensated health care, would have to cut $10 million from its budget. The hospital isn’t looking “for a handout” but more than half of the families they serve have insurance through Medicaid, which does not cover the costs of care. “It only works because the LIP program provides supplemental payments which reduces but does not eliminated the financial shortfall of Medicaid.”
Bryan Campbell, executive vice president of the Duval County Medical Society, testified that the LIP program is vital to UF Health Jacksonville and that the hospital — which receives $95 million in supplemental LIP payments — could be forced to close within six months if LIP is not renewed. Campbell said that UF Health Jacksonville is the only Level 1 trauma center in Northeast Florida.
Unlike Sexton, who kept her remarks specifically to LIP, Campbell said that LIP is a “temporary solution” and that the funds by themselves are not adequate and that Florida AHCA must also submit an expansion plan for the federal government to consider in addition to LIP.
Florida Senate President Andy Gardiner has asked AHCA to submit the Medicaid expansion plan, called FHIX, to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for consideration along with the proposed amendment for the LIP program.
Before AHCA can submit the proposed amendment, it must first take public testimony. Senior said the state is required to hold two meetings but that the agency would hold a third.
While most who testified were affiliated with health care providers, Maria McCorkle — mother of two children, Anna and Connor — benefits from LIP funding. She said that if LIP is eliminated it wouldn’t be disruption for her family, it would be devastating.
McCorkle said her children are patients at Nemours. Before going to the clinic, she said, no one could diagnose her son or say whether he would live to be a teenager. She said it was a “devastating diagnosis without a diagnosis.”
Nemours was able to find he has a rare dormant muscular dystrophy that the children had inherited from McCorkle. “Hospitals like Nemours have given my family hope, they have given my family answers, they have given my children a future,” she said.
Critically ill children in central Florida need a hospital such as Nemours, she said. “Please remember that my children, it’s not their fault they are sick. They are not a burden. They are not political pawns, but they are the future of this great state and this great country.”
