With the House and Senate budget talks stalled, the Senate Budget Committee took up several controversial bills Thursday, dealing with Medicaid reform, taxpayer funding of abortion and preventing doctors from asking patients about guns in their home.
The Senates take on Medicaid reform passed the committee over the objections of some Democrats, and will now head to the floor.
Essential to the reforms are provisions that move Medicaid patients into managed care plans. Democrats said it was an expansion of a pilot program in Broward and other North Florida counties whose cost-saving measures are unproven.
I have a major problem with the premise of doing a massive expansion to a managed care experiment that we basically, four and a half years later, dont know if it works, Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich, D-Weston, said.
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, countered that the statewide program would include guaranteed cost savings.
First I would point out that this is not an expansion of the pilot program. The pilot did show examples of cost savings. This bill provides guaranteed savings, Gaetz said.
Legislators grappling with a $3.8 billion shortfall have long targeted the states Medicaid program, which is currently funded at $21 billion in state and federal money, taking up nearly 30 percent of the budget, for savings and reforms.
The reforms, however, require federal waivers before they can be enacted. Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who is pushing the bill as chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and Human Service Appropriations, has taken heat for including steps to leave Medicaid altogether if the waivers are not granted.
It also proposes to walk away from the federal program if the waiver requests are not granted by a certain time. Thats walking away from $12 billion in federal money, said Karen Woodall of the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy, a liberal policy advocacy group.
Negron has stated that he is confident the federal government will give Florida the necessary waivers, but that if they dont, Florida will fund its Medicaid program as best it can.
He pushed back against the notion that managed care was incompatible with Medicaid.
1.9 million of the 2.9 million of people who receive Medicaid benefits are already receiving managed care, Negron said.
Senators also passed a controversial bill preventing patients with health insurance policies obtained through exchanges set up by the federal health care law and funded with federal or state taxpayer dollars from using those funds to get an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother.
Several female senators - Republican and Democrat - balked at the bill until an amendment was tacked on that more clearly allowed abortions to be performed if a pregnancy endangered the health of the mother. Still, four Democrats voted against the bill.
This is really kind of a throwback to the Middle Ages. Theyre entitled to life, too, folks, Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Miami, said before the amendment was added.
Another bill from Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, would allow Choose Life Inc., to use a portion of funds from Choose Life license plates for advertising and marketing for groups that counsel women with unwanted pregnancies. The bill passed over objections from Democrats who feared politically motivated ads.
We have probably hundreds of thousands of dollars that arent being used (to aid women). This will make certain that ore money will go in that direction, Fasano said.
Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
