Last Sunday, the Associated Press reported that millions of health care providers (and the uninsured) in Florida are caught between two opposing camps. The governor and the state lawmakers seek to privatize Medicaid, but require the Obama administration’s go-ahead. An excerpt:
Florida’s Medicaid program currently costs more than $21 billion a year, with the federal government picking up roughly half the tab. It covers nearly 3 million people – about half are children – and consumes about 30 percent of the state budget.
In an effort to cut costs, the state has been trying to privatize Medicaid – rather than having government insurance, patients would be assigned to for-profit insurance companies, which would receive a per-person fee from the state and decide what services and prescriptions to cover. A five-county pilot program showed little or no savings, however, but Scott and the Legislature still want to take a revamped version of the program statewide.
Meanwhile, Florida has some of the most stringent eligibility requirements in the country. A family of three with income of $11,000 a year makes too much and single residents are not covered. The Obama administration wants those requirements loosened so that an estimated 2 million uninsured Floridians could be covered by Medicaid. Feds will pick up 100 percent of the tab for the first three years and at least 90 percent after, along with extra funding for technology costs….But Scott says Florida can’t afford any additional costs.
If Governor Rick Perry sticks to his guns in refusing to expand Medicaid, Texas might face a similar problem. In related news, the Dallas Morning News published a story last Saturday on President Barack Obama’s and challenger Mitt Romney’s opposing views on Medicaid and how they would affect Texas. An excerpt:
In few places are the stakes higher than in Texas, where experts estimate that by 2021, Obama’s plan would deliver $9 billion more a year in federal Medicaid money to the state than his Republican rival’s approach, providing medical insurance to an estimated 1.5 million Texans.
The Romney plan would cap the federal government’s commitment to Medicaid, linking increases in its annual contribution to a cost-of-living formula and freeing up states to redesign their programs.