Gov. Rick Scott, who made his controversial millions of dollars in the private health care industry, Wednesday created a commission to examine government-run hospitals in Florida.
The executive order Scott signed creates the Commission on Review of Taxpayer Funded Hospital Districts.
Before his swearing-in as governor, Scott’s health care transition team issued a report which included a stinging assessment of publicy funded districts, complaining that the hospitals they support largely muscle-out private facilities and may no longer be needed in Florida.
Palm Beach County’s health care district, created 20 years ago, was generally backed by Scott’s advisers at the time. The district’s taxpayer dollars are deployed countywide, not concentrated in one hospital.
“I am confident this new Commission will protect Florida taxpayers,” Scott said. “At the same time, the commission’s guidance will help provide Floridians a high-quality health care system.”
Scott helped build Columbia/HCA, one of the nations’ biggest health care companies, until his ouster by its board. Three years after his departure, the company paid $1.7 billion to settle federal accusations of Medicare fraud.
In announcing the commission’s formation, Scott said its goals will include reviewing how doctors are paid at the public hospitals, whether they serve as broad a population as they should, and whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth. The 10-member commission has until next January to complete its findings.
There are more than 60 hospital or health care districts in Florida.
A stark state spending plan, flush with red ink, began taking shape Monday in the state Senate, with school dollars sliced 6.5 percent and a health care proposal on track to save $1 billion in Medicaid spending, much of it from program cuts.
Health and Human Services budget chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, praised the Senate’s $28 billion for maintaining spending on some key program, including funding for homeless, AIDS drug assistance, and the state’s KidCare and Healthy Start insurance programs.
But he acknowledged the Senate — like the House — is ready to recast Medicaid, putting almost 3 million Floridians into managed care programs to trim costs, while also cutting services.
“We’ve heard that the current system is irretrievably broken, so we’re starting a new system,” Negron said.
A Medicaid pilot program operating in five counties since 2006, including Broward, has been derided as a failure by many critics. But Negron said the new program will look nothing like the pilot program and will not drive frustrated patients to use hospital emergency rooms — one of the costliest venues for care.
But the Senate is banking heavily on its high-wire reform effort. In the budget unveiled Monday, hospitals would lose 10 percent of state funding for treating both in- and outpatient Medicaid recipients — cutting $450 million from the budget.
The Medically Needy program, an optional program long paid by the state and federal governments, would be sharply scaled back to save $230 million under the Senate budget — eliminating financial help given transplant patients and other hard-to-insure Floridians.
School funding, meanwhile, would drop 6.5 percent under the Senate plan. In the good-cop, bad-cop approach of budgeters, that’s still the mildest slice: The House has recommended a 7.7 percent per-pupil reduction, while Gov. Rick Scott called for a 10 percent drop.
Asked what his response is to critics who say his changes are designed to benefit Solantic, the chain of urgent care clinics Scott recently transferred ownership of to his wife Ann, Scott stayed on message.
“Everything that I want to accomplish in health care in Florida is basically what I’ve believed all my life. I believe in the principle that if you have more competition, it will drive down the prices. If you give people more choices, it’s better for the consumer and also help drive down price. I believe that we should reward the person that takes care of themself, eats right, doesn’t smoke, exercises, things like that. All those things are the things that I believe in and that’s exactly what I’m going to do as governor,” Scott said.
Bondi filed a motion with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta seeking an en banc hearing, meaning the appellate review would be held before all 10 federal judges.
The reason for her request, Bondi said in a press release, “is to avoid any unnecessary delays that may arise if a three-judge panel decides the case and then refers it for a hearing by the full 11th Circuit.”
If the court agrees to her request, the case would be heard on June 6, according to Bondi.
“This case is so significant to all Americans that it needs to be resolved as quickly as possible,” she said in the release. “If granted, the petition would allow a faster track to the Supreme Court.”
President Obama’s administration filed an appeal Tuesday afternoon in Florida’s lawsuit challenging the federal health care law, meeting a Pensacola federal judge’s deadline.
Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida, who struck down the law as unconstitutional, issued a stay Thursday of his earlier ruling, effectively ordering the 26 states that challenged it – including Florida – to continue to implement the law.
But e gave the White House until Thursday to appeal for his stay to remain intact.
The U.S. Justice Department filed the appeal to the Eleventh Circuit appeals court in Atlanta, but could have gone directly to the U.S. Supreme Court where the case will ultimately be decided.
Sen. Joe Negron wants fat Floridians and smokers to get healthy or else.
Included in Negron’s revamp of the state-federal Medicaid program – which Negron will release tomorrow – is a component aimed at what senators are calling “personal responsibility.”
Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who helped craft Negron’s bill, said Medicaid patients have to take control of their health care just as he had to do when his doctor told him to lose weight.
“We’re saying that an individual who’s been diagnosed as morbidly obese needs to be on a medically-directed program of weight loss to manage that health care problem that could turn into an increased taxpayer liability. The same thing with smokers,” Gaetz said.
The bill would require smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts to get treatment, Gaetz said.
Negron said his bill would include incentives for Medicaid patients to lose weight, quit smoking and stop drinking but did not give details about what they would be.
If they don’t get thinner and put down the smokes, Negron said their coverage could be cut off.
“It’s possible,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.
He said the Medicaid program currently includes a seldom-used provision that would allow the state to boot patients out.
“If you are non-compliant with your appointments, if you reject medical advice, there is a system in place under current law, which is rarely used but it has been used, …where someone would no longer receive services,” Negron said.
Healthier Medicaid patients will save the state money, Gaetz and Negron said.
“They not only compromise the quality of that person’s life they compromise the efficacy of any medical care that might be rendered but they drive up costs that are then shifted to the friends and neighbors who are actually paying the health care bill for the individual who is smoking,” Gaetz said.
The system can no longer tolerate someone “who is an alcoholic and wants to offload the medical consequences of alcoholism to the taxpayers of Florida,” Gaetz said.
Gov. Rick Scott‘s characterization of taxes, regulation and litigation as the “axis of unemployment” during his inaugural speech yesterday is destined to become a familiar mantra for fellow Republicans as they embrace his pro-business agenda.
It didn’t take long for Rep. Matt Hudson to latch onto the catchphrase to pitch his latest bill resurrecting legislation vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist last year.
Hudson, a fellow Republican who hails from Scott’s Naples hometown, filed the bill (HB 119) that would “reduce, streamline and clarify regulations” for providers overseen by the Agency for Health Care Administration, according to a press release issued by Hudson’s office.
“HB 119 will be essential in fighting the axis of unemployment and ensuring that the tax dollars of Florida’s citizens are not being wasted,” Hudson said in the statement.
After more than two months since GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott defeated him in a brutal primary election, Attorney General Bill McCollum finally came out in support of his one-time foe.
“Florida is facing a critical time. Our state needs conservative leaders who will grow our economy and create jobs. We need merit pay and an end to teacher tenure in our public schools, major litigation reform, smaller government, low taxes and a repeal of Obamacare. With this in mind, I will cast my vote for Rick Scott for Governor. It’s the better choice for Florida,” McCollum’s less-than-enthusiastic statement, released by the Republican Party of Sarasota, read.
McCollum, at one point a shoe-in for the nomination, lost the GOP primary after Scott spent $50 million of his own fortune on campaign ads attacking the former Congressman for being a Washington insider.
McCollum said recently he would not endorse Scott’s Democratic opponent Alex Sink, in part because she supports the federal health care law over which McCollum has sued the federal government.
A federal judge recently allowed McCollum’s lawsuit to proceed.
McCollum was the final holdout among state GOP leaders who at one point pilloried Scott, who was forced out of the hospital chain he founded shortly before Columbia/HCA was forced to pay $1.7 billion in fines to the federal government for Medicare fraud.
Doing his best Ronald Reagan “There-you-go-again” imitation, wealthy Republican governor candidate Rick Scott addresses the Columbia/HCA Medicare fraud scandal in a new 60-second ad.
“Bill McCollum’s been in politics 30 years. You’d think he’d want to talk about his record. Instead, he’s just attacking me. That’s what career politicians do,” Scott says of the attorney general and rival GOP gubernatorial candidate.
Scott, the former chief executive officer of Columbia/HCA, acknowledges the hospital chain “was fined by the government for Medicare fraud,” though he doesn’t mention the dollar figure — more than $1.7 billion in fines and settlements after Scott’s 1997 departure.
“I wasn’t charged or even questioned by the authorities. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that the company made mistakes. And as CEO I take responsibility and learn from it,” says Scott, who then goes on to extol the quality and cost-effectiveness of his former hospital chain.
Dr. William G. “Doc” Myers, longtime state legislator from Hobe Sound and a giant on health care issues, died Tuesday at Jupiter Medical Center. He was 79.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is in the midst of a press conference right now announcing that the National Federation of Independent Businesses has joined his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Obama’s federal health care overhaul.
McCollum amended the lawsuit today (see a copy here) to include all complainants: 20 states, the NFIB and two business owners, Mary Brown and Kaj Ahlburg.
“The outpouring of opposition to this new law was overwhelming and our members urged us to do everything in our power to stop this unconstitutional law,” said Dan Danner, NFIB president and CEO.
The suit challenges the so-called “individual mandate” in the law that requires Americans to buy health care coverage or face a fine.
McCollum said he expects a hearing in September on a yet-to-be-filed motion to dismiss from the U.S. Justice Department. McCollum said the suit would probably end up in the U.S. Supreme Court by in 2012. McCollum is running for governor this year and will not be the state’s attorney general after this year.
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.
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.
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.
Allen West, the Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, said the government needs to fix its current health care programs before rolling out a new one.
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.
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.
Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson last week asked folks to 
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