Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday signed a landmark Medicaid overhaul that calls for shifting hundreds of thousands of low-income and elderly Floridians into managed-care plans.
Scotts signature on a two-bill package (HB 7107 and HB 7109) was not a surprise -- he has long pushed for transforming the Medicaid system.
Now, it will be up to the state to convince the federal government to go along. The state Agency for Health Care Administration is required to submit a proposal to federal Medicaid officials by Aug. 1 and is scheduled to start a flurry of public hearings June 10.
If the overhaul is approved, AHCA in July 2012 would start moving forward with a mandatory managed-care program for seniors who need long-term care. That phase would be finished by October 2013.
AHCA would then start putting in place the managed-care requirement for a broader Medicaid population -- such as low-income women and children -- in January 2013 and finish by October 2014.
The plan, however, has faced opposition from Democratic lawmakers and some patient advocates. They argue, in part, that relying on HMOs and other types of managed-care plans could squeeze needed services for Medicaid beneficiaries.
Lawmakers spent more than a year considering changes to the $20 billion Medicaid program and passed the two bills on the final day of the 2011 legislative session.
Also late Thursday, Scott signed one in a series of controversial bills dealing with abortion.
The bill (HB 97) would ban abortion coverage from policies sold through a health-insurance exchange -- a type of insurance marketplace that is scheduled to start operating in 2014 as part of last years federal health law.
Scott also approved another measure (HB 1193) that takes aim at the hotly debated federal law. That bill says people cannot be compelled to buy health insurance, except in limited circumstances.
The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill in response to what has become known as the individual mandate in the federal law. That mandate will require almost all Americans to have health insurance starting in 2014.
