Christine Jordan Sexton
The House and Senate exchanged and rejected budget offers on Friday and with one week left in the Session the two chambers continue to disagree over how to finance health care and whether 800,000 working Floridians should receive health care access.
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said if the chambers cannot find a “reasonable approach to solve the budget impasse” the House will leave May 1 and “reset and come back.”
His remarks were made after the Senate rejected the House’s offer to put $600 million into health care if the Senate would agree to walk away from its proposed expansion, called FHIX, and not worry about Low Income Pool or how much the federal government would agree to give the state for supplemental Medicaid funds.
The $600 million would draw down an additional $900 million in federal Medicaid dollars. The offer was three times the amount of the first offer of $200 million the House put forward.
Because the House offer would put the $600 million into health care and not the Low Income Pool the plan would not require approval from the federal government unlike a LIP extension.
In its offer to the Senate, the House noted that if the chambers agreed they could begin working on the budget this weekend “and accomplish our work in a manner that will not incur costs to Florida taxpayers associated with an unnecessarily protracted extended session.”
The House made the offer after the Senate rejected the initial offer and stood by its intention to expand Medicaid and pursue Low Income Pool. The Senate also suggested that the chambers extend the session until June 30 which would give the state time to hear back from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to approve the plan to expand Medicaid as well as approve LIP.
Florida Politics reported earlier this week that CMS has until July 4 to approve Florida’s amendment request to continue the LIP program. The state’s fiscal year, though, ends June 30 and a budget would need to be in place before then to avoid a government shutdown.
Senate President Andy Gardiner and his Appropriations Chairman, Tom Lee, both suggested that the Legislature work with the Governor’s Office to open communications with CMS to try to get an agreement on LIP funding before then.
Crisafulli said his chamber didn’t want to include Medicaid expansion in budget negotiations and that they wanted to stick only to finances, although he did note that his chamber had interest in removing certificate of need and having the ability to sell insurance across state lines.
Lee made similar remarks earlier in the day noting that there had been”a lot of conversation, a lot of background chatter about CON, (ambulatory surgical) centers selling insurance across state lines, major changes to scope of practice, things of that nature, that would need to go along with some dramatic reforms.”
Those issues have been important to the House which wants to “disrupt the status quo” when it comes to health care delivery and financing. At its last regularly scheduled meeting of the 2015 session House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Jason Brodeur told his committee that cetificate of need, health care mandates, and medical malpractice changes would be front and center during the 2016 session.
