Christine Jordan Sexton
Gov. Rick Scott isn’t saying what his next move will be.
Scott on Thursday would not say whether he would drop his lawsuit against the federal government now that Florida has been given tentative assuance that the Low Income Pool program will exist for the next two years.
“It’s not even official. It’s not even done yet,” Scott said, when asked whether the news from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was enough to get him to drop the lawsuit he filed in federal court.
As the battle over hospital spending and the state budget has heated up, Scott has been increasingly aggressive, going so far at one point to compare the administration of President Barack Obama to the mafia.
But the feds advised Florida in a letter on Thursday that it tentatively could receive $1 billion in LIP funds for the 2015-16 budget and $600 million in LIP funds for the 2016-17 budget. Florida is currently authorized for more than $2 billion in LIP funding.
The Republican governor — who has spent much of his political career railing against the Obama administration — sounded cautious when discussing the latest development.
The governor told reporters in Perry that he has continued to have conversations with the federal government about the Low Income Pool extensions, but didn’t say whether he was expecting to receive the tentative approval from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that came out Thursday.
Scott did say, though, that LIP is a federal program and he expects the federal government to continue to fund it.
“When they decided to start a program they should not walk away from the program,” the governor said. “So my expectation is they should continue to fund their program.”
Scott filed his lawsuit in federal court in late April seeking declaratory relief that the Obama Administration violated the U.S. Constitution by withholding supplemental Medicaid funding from the state, in the form of Low Income Pool funds. Scott filed the lawsuit after the Legislature failed to reach accord on the one must-pass bill of the year: the state budget.
The impasse was came about because the Florida Senate has proposed in its budget to include LIP funding as well as a Medicaid expansion but the House of Representatives didn’t include either stream of Medicaid funding.
Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi sued Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In a news release announcing the lawsuit, Scott said, “President Obama’s sudden end to the Low Income Pool (LIP) healthcare program to leverage us for Obamacare is illegal and a blatant overreach of executive power.”
The Low Income Pool program is a supplemental Medicaid financing program that is made possible under an 1115 Medicaid waiver. The federal government approved the waiver for a three-year extension last year, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in April 2014 that it would not extend the Low Income Pool beyond this June 30.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
