Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Holly Benson resigned from her post this morning, the day after meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist who appointed her to the post in Feb. 2008.

“I had a meeting with the Governor the other day to talk about some opportunities that lie ahead, and I regret that because of those opportunities I will no longer be able to serve as your Secretary,” Benson wrote in an e-mail to AHCA workers this morning.

Benson, a former state representative from the Panhandle, is expected to jump into the attorney general’s race next month, according to sources close to the Pensacola Republican. That could elevate interest in a GOP primary against Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, who’s already announced his candidacy to replace Bill McCollum. Democratic state Sens. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres and Dan Gelber of Miami Beach are already engaged in a heated battle for the state’s top law enforcement chief.

Crist tapped Benson, a bond lawyer, to head AHCA in 2008. Before that, she left her Pensacola House seat to head DBPR, again at Crist’s bidding.

In the House, Benson was the force behind a model Medicaid reform project that has had mixed results. (more…)

Backers of President Barack Obama’s health care reforms unleashed a television ad in Orlando, Louisville and Washington pillorying Humana’s scare tactics targeting seniors and the plan’s impact on Medicare.

Americans United for Change, Obama’s campaign organization-turned unofficial presidential PR machine, is running the ad and also staging a protest at Humana headquarters in West Palm Beach today at noon.

Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched an investigation into Humana Inc.’s possible misuse of beneficiary information to send anti-health care mailers to its Medicare gap coverage enrollees. The Louisville-based insurer is one of the largest Medicare supplemental insurance providers.

Humana sent mailers to seniors in several states, including Florida, containing what could be misleading information about Obama’s plan, warning of cuts to benefits and increases in costs to the popular government-backed insurance plan for seniors.

According to the AARP’s web site, “None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services.”

Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink refused to say whether she supports Congressional Democrats’ government-backed health insurance proposal, known as the “public option,” despite her GOP gubernatorial opponent Attorney General Bill McCollum’s demands.

Attorney General Bill McCollum, the presumptive GOP candidate for governor, pilloried President Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ public option and challenged Sink state her position on the issue.

Sink, however, maintained her neutrality but hammered on the Medicaid portion of the health care reforms. She said she would not support anything that increased the state’s share of Medicaid payments, something that McCollum, as her campaign pointed out earlier this week, did numerous times during his long tenure in Congress.

Gov. Charlie Crist performed as the Sunshine State’s chief pitch-man, blowing off Florida’s historic population loss and touting the fine weather in a CNBC interview this morning.

Florida saw a drop of 58,000 residents last year, the first population decrease since military residents left the state after World War II.

“It’s not that big a deal, to be honest with you,” Crist shrugged off the decline on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” show today.

The governor then launched into a Sunshine State sales pitch, touting declines in property taxes and property insurance rates and the weather.

“And it’s Florida. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a gorgeous day today down here in South Florida. You just can’t beat the Sunshine State,” said Crist, who is in Miami. Florida I really think is on the rise and it’s a great deal for an awful lot of people, too.”

Although Florida’s unemployment rate is nearly 11 percent, Crist was upbeat about the job market and pointed to Palm Beach County as a shining example.

Palm Beach County’s unemployment rate was 11.7 percent in July, one percentage point above the state average.

“Even in the Palm Beach County area where Scripps and Torrey Pines and some of these other scientific institutes have located, Max Planck…it’s been great for that area of the state,” Crist said. “We’re very pleased with the direction things are going. We wish they were better, don’t misunderstand me. But we’re not sitting still. We’re on the move. And I continue to be optimistic and encouraged about where we’re going.”

Crist, who drew the wrath of fellow Republicans by urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, reversed that position on the health care reforms now being considered in Washington.

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Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson last week asked folks to stop giving pork a bad rap by calling the H1N1 virus “swine flu” because of the devastating impact it’s having on the pork industry.

But the threat of spreading the virus between pigs and people is a real threat, according to yesterday’s New York Times.

Not in the way most might think, however.

Vets fear that humans will spread the virus to the animals and are instituting precautions at state fairs and other places where the porcine creatures come into contact with those higher up on the food chain.

“When the Oregon State Fair opens next week, the pigs will be kept behind an elaborate configuration of plastic and ribbon barriers, taller-than-usual fences and off-limits walkways. The state veterinarian is also urging visitors to stay six feet away.

The worry? The spread of swine flu, but with a twist: state officials hope to insulate the pigs from sick people.

‘Help us protect the piggies,’ signs at the fair will read in pink,” the story begins.

“The whole idea of the animals getting sick from people is a foreign concept to people, but that’s what we’re looking at here,” said Iowa state veterinarian David E. Marshall said in the story.

Actblue.com launched a website to urge contributors to give to Democratic Congressmen who back a public health care option despite the toll the health care reforms have taken on President Barack Obama’s popularity here in Florida.

The organization’s website Actblue.com claims to have raised nearly $250,000 from more than 4,000 supporters for Democrats.

“Democratic members of Congress need to understand that a healthcare reform bill with a Public Option is simply not an option– it’s a requirement. The congressmembers on this list have said in no uncertain terms that they will not vote for a bill without a public option all the way through Conference. That takes courage, and we need to show them how much we appreciate them for doing so,” the website urges.

Recipients include Floridian U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler of Delray Beach, Corrine Brown of Jacksonville and Alcee Hastings of Miramar. Wexler and Hastings held a jam-packed health care town hall meeting in Delray Beach today.

Wexler received $3,610 from the site. Brown pulled in $3,306 and Hastings $3,195.

Allen West

West will host his own town hall meeting on health care tonight at 7 p.m. at South Florida Bible College in Deerfield Beach.

West says reform efforts should begin by properly identifying what inflates costs in the current system. He said reforms should reduce lawsuits, encourage employers to offer coverage to workers and address coverage for illegal immigrants, whose trips to emergency rooms incur costs that are ultimately passed on to the rest of us.

“When people talk about a public option, we already have a public option - in Medicare, Medicaid and the SCHIP option,” said West. “The federal government needs to show that it can effectively run those programs.”

RPOF Chairman Jim Greer stood by his assertion that President Barack Obama’s health care reforms could lead to “forced, taxpayer-funded abortions.”

Greer held a roundtable with reporters at GOP headquarters this morning, covering a range of issues including the hijinks at town hall meetings throughout the country, including one in Tampa that erupted in physical violence.

Opponents of Obama’s health care package claim that the changes would create “death panels” that would pull the plug on Grandma to save government spending.

“I don’t like the term death panels,” Greer said.

But, he added, “I do believe that trying to pass legislation such as this will provide opportunity for certain types of medical procedures that in some cases Americans would not be aware of or in most cases Americans would not want taxpayer funds to help facilitate.”

The chairman was apparently referring to abortions. Greer yesterday circulated a memo questioning the health care bill and whether it would “work to systematically ‘increase birth intervals between pregnancies,’ opening the very real probability of forced, tax-payer funded abortions.”

He stood by his characterization of the bill this morning.

“If the procedure is financed by taxpayer funds, then in fact the word forced or mandated would be appropriate,” Greer said.

The portion of the bill Greer refers to deals with home visitation services.

The full text follows:

“The term ‘nurse home visitation services’ means home visits by trained nurses to families with a first-time pregnant woman, or a child (under 2 years of age), who is eligible for medical assistance under this title, but only, to the extent determined by the Secretary based upon evidence, that such services are effective in one or more of the following:
(1) Improving maternal or child health and pregnancy outcomes or increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.”

Greer decried the outbursts at town hall meetings but blamed Democrats for spinning the events and not being able to answer questions about the health care bill.

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Asked this morning about a state task force that state Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, and Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington requested to study the potential cancer cluster in Palm Beach County, Florida Surgeon General Ana Viamonte Ros said Wednesday that the county health department was engaged in the issue.

“We’ve already had a number of townhall meetings,” she said.

Listen here to her full response.

Klein

That’s the advice from one group encouraging opponents of Democratic health care overhaul efforts to show up at a Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations meeting next week where U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, is scheduled to speak.

But those hoping to grill Klein may be disappointed. COBWRA President Ken Lassiter says visitors and their non-perishable food donations are indeed welcome at his group’s meeting, but questions from non-COBWRA members won’t be allowed.

In the heated debate over health care reform, groups on the left and right are alerting their members to public appearances by members of Congress during the August recess. Some of the events are town hall gatherings focused on health care. Others, including Klein’s COBWRA appearance, turn out to be something else.

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Just yesterday, a Broward County community forum with U.S. Rep. Ron Klein’s staff turned into a raucous confrontation somewhat reminiscent of the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. And tonight, by all accounts, it happened again — this time in Tampa.

According to The Tampa Tribune:

What was supposed to be a town hall forum on President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan this evening turned instead into a shouting match, complete with shoving and scuffles.

The forum featured Tampa legislators U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor and state Rep. Betty Reed and was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. It ended about 7:15 p.m. with Castor only able to say a few words, most of which were inaudible because of the shouting from protestors.

… There were at least two scuffles between protestors trying to enter and organizers manning the doors. One of those involved in a scuffle, Randy Arthur, of Oldsmar said he was injured by those manning the doors and said he would file a police report.

He and his wife, Kathy, were outside the meeting room when organizers tried to close the doors. Randy Arthur and others tried to stop them “and he didn’t give up,” Kathy Arthur said.

Randy Arthur, who owns an air conditioning service company, later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest. “They slammed him into the wall,” Kathy Arthur said.

Meanwhile, a Web site used by one group of Obama critics, the Tampa 9-12 Project, has messages posted by folks who said they witnessed the mayhem:

“Freedom loving patriots celebrated liberty by knocking down a disabled woman and starting a fist fight with someone. I feel sorry for the people who went there to learn, whether it was to support or criticize. Too bad they weren’t allowed to speak.”

It was supposed to be a routine public meeting by the staff of U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton.

By the end, The Miami Herald reports, about 100 protesters besieged Klein’s staff at a north Broward County library on Wednesday, yelling in opposition to Democrats’ health-care reform proposals and even questioing whether President Obama is really a U.S. citizen. (more…)

Rooney

Today, several letter-writers respond to Rooney.

Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman told a roomful of Acreage residents on Thursday that he had cancer and underwent surgery last year to treat it.

It was the first time Weisman has discussed his cancer publicly. The revelation came during a meeting of several hundred residents concerned about a potential brain-cancer cluster in their community, where state environmental regulators plan to draw samples from private drinking water wells.

“I personally suffer from cancer,” Weisman told the crowd. “I had surgery last year. I’m in testing right now. I live in Wellington on public water. My neighbor has a different problem on public water in Wellington right next door from me. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I got it. But these things just happen.”

Weisman declined to discuss the cancer in more detail Friday.

Some residents at the meeting wanted to know why the county hasn’t done more to connect the community to public utility lines.

Weisman said his daughter lives in The Acreage with her husband.

“My daughter is of child-bearing age and she lives in the central north Acreage. She has lived there for a year. She just got married. She is living there right now, but that is not why we do anything here or not. These are all honest people who have their job. This is what they live for. Public health.”

Asked whether he would encourage his daughter to stay in the neighborhood, Weisman said: “Yes, because I don’t know there is a problem that I can identify.”

PALM BEACH GARDENS — Gov. Charlie Crist, attending a biosciences powwow at Palm Beach Community College this morning, said he’s aware of the concerns of residents of The Acreage about a potential cancer cluster in their community.

Crist

“I am aware of it and naturally I’m concerned about it,” Crist said in response to a question from reporters. He noted the state Department of Health is looking into the matter.

After Acreage residents tallied 46 cases of people with malignant or benign brain tumors or cysts in the brain in three zip codes (33470, 33412 and 33411), Sen. Bill Nelson held a public forum and DOH said it will determine by next month whether the incidence rate for the disease is greater than it should be. If the numbers exceed what would be expected, the agency could launch an investigation.

Crist, a Republican who’s running for U.S. Senate in 2010, voiced some doubts about the massive health care reform effort being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

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