Mitch Perry
Senate President Andy Gardiner says state legislators have to be careful not to make priorities out of “second-tier proposals” that don’t fully address the problems with a lack of health care coverage.
“If you don’t have insurance, it doesn’t matter how many new programs you create, you’re still not going to have access,” he said Wednesday while speaking to reporters in Tallahassee at the state Capitol.
Among the programs the House passed in the 2015 session that the Senate did not include eliminating the certificate-of-need process for hospital construction and creating ambulatory surgical centers.
Those proposals are favored by the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, and they didn’t appreciate the comments.
“President Gardiner’s half-hearted welcoming of debate on proven free-market concepts was disappointing,” AFP state director Chris Hudson said in a prepared statement. “Apparently he still doesn’t understand that when government gets out of the way of innovation and stops standing between patients and doctors, access and quality of care will dramatically improve.”
“Rather than balking at reform, lawmakers in Tallahassee should be doing everything possible to push for all forms of what President Gardiner admitted are, ‘really neat, innovative, ideas,'” Hudson said.
“Florida has a great opportunity to lead from the front and show the rest of the country that truly free-market reforms are the key to successfully bringing down the cost of medicine and expanding access to quality care.”
