Christine Jordan Sexton
Gov. Rick Scott filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pensacola on Tuesday 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 money.
The lawsuit was filed shortly after the House of Representatives announced it was adjourning for the regular legislative session because of the impasse over Medicaid expansion and the Low Income Pool program. The Senate has proposed in its version of the budget to include LIP funding as well as a Medicaid expansion, but the House included neither. As a result the chambers are more than $4 billion apart in spending.
Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Agency for Health Care Administration are the plaintiffs in the 22-page lawsuit. 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, are the defendants.
Twelve days ago Scott announced he was going to sue the federal government for “coercing” the state into Medicaid expansion by threatening to withhold Low Income Pool dollars if the state did not expand Medicaid under the federal health care law.
In a press 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 June 30, 2015.
Nevertheless, Scott built his proposed 2015-16 budget with the assumption that the money would be there and, moreover, at an Associated Press pre-Session conference in January downplayed the possibility that the funding wouldn’t be renewed.
“His administration is effectively attempting to coerce Florida into Obamacare by ending an existing federal healthcare program and telling us to expand Medicaid instead,” Scott said in the news release announcing the lawsuit. “This sort of coercion tactic has already been called illegal by the US Supreme Court.”
Senate President Andy Gardiner issued a statement noting that the governor is entitled to sue the federal government, but that he didn’t see how it would “yield a timely resolution to the critical health care challenges facing our state.”
“The Senate budget anticipated the potential reduction or elimination of LIP funding and included solutions to provide uninsured Floridians access to health care services and coverage,” Gardiner said in the statement. “We remain hopeful CMS will approve the Senate proposal submitted by AHCA.”
The federal government notified Florida in a letter this month that supplemental financing pools such as the Low Income Pool were not an effective use of taxpayers’ money and that access to health insurance is the preferred policy to pursue.
The correspondence triggered a letters from Florida’s congressional Republicans as well as Florida’s Deputy Medicaid Director Justin Senior. Scott threatened to sue and appeared on Fox News accusing the Obama administration of bullying the state and acting like the Sopranos, the fictional New Jersey crime family in the popular HBO series.
Scott made his political name opposing Obamacare, but in 2013 reversed his position to support expanding Medicaid coverage to uninsured Floridians so long as the federal government was footing the bill. The governor reiterated his support for Medicaid expansion while on the campaign trail in 2014 seeking re-election.
Scott then again reversed his position on Medicaid expansion early in this session and came out fighting any attempt to expand the health care program for up to 800,000 uninsured Floridians.
The Florida Senate has championed expanding the Medicaid expansion, saying it’s a way to keep LIP funding intact. The House, meanwhile, has opposed the move.
