Christine Jordan Sexton
Gov. Rick Scott‘s administration is taking steps to try to win federal approval of a plan to draw down federal health funds after being criticized for not doing enough to ensure supplemental hospital funding will flow to the state.
The Agency for Health Care Administration has scheduled two, two-hour meetings in Orlando and Miami April 29 and April 30, respectively, to take public testimony on an amendment to its sweeping Medicaid 1115 waiver. The amendment is necessary to keep intact a supplemental Medicaid funding program for Florida’s hospitals known as the Low Income Pool. The waiver initially negotiated by then-Gov. Jeb Bush allows the state to operate the mandatory Medicaid managed-care program.
The announcement will be published by the state on Tuesday, the same day the Florida Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a four-hour meeting on Low Income Pool and how it could be funded. Senate President Andy Gardiner announced the meeting in a memo on Friday to senators and noted that public testimony will be taken at the meeting.
When approving Medicaid waivers and amendments to waivers, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services examines the public input into the waiver request.
The Orlando and Miami meetings come on the heels of criticism by the Florida Senate that the Agency for Health Care Administration has not done enough to secure the supplemental Medicaid funding beyond this summer.
The impending loss of the $2.1 billion and what the state should do to lessen the blow has brought the 2015 session to a standstill. The Florida Senate has proposed a two-step plan: to expand Medicaid expansion to working Floridians as well as create an alternative formula on how the $2.1 billion in funds should be delivered to the hospitals.
The House, however, has advocated eliminating the Low Income Pool from statutes and does not support a Medicaid expansion.
During her Senate confirmation hearing AHCA Secretary Liz Dudek told members of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections that the agency had not given the federal government an amendment to consider until last week. She said the amendment the agency submitted was the alternative Senate Low Income Pool formula.
She told senators that her staff was advised by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that an amendment wouldn’t be necessary because the federal government would be flexible in its discussions with Florida.
However, negotiations between the state and federal government have soured over the past three weeks and the federal government sent a letter to Florida last week advising the state that Medicaid expansion and insurance was a better use of the state’s federal funding than uncompensated care pools such as Low Income Pool.
The correspondence triggered a letter-writing campaign and led to Scott’s announcement that he would sue the federal government for trying to coerce Florida into a Medicaid expansion. Scott also appeared on Fox News and accused the Obama Administration of acting like The Sopranos.
LIP is a $2.1 billion program — mostly local and federal dollars — that pays hospitals and federally qualified health centers treating the uninsured. The money also is used to help train physicians.
