Christine Jordan Sexton - page 42

Decades-long battles over incorporating managed care in the Medicaid program came to an end in 2014 when Florida fully implemented a statewide managed-care program that is mandatory for most beneficiaries, from the cradle to the grave. Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Liz Dudek notes that the transition from fee-for-service to managed care took less than the three years the Legislature allotted the agency when it passed the sweeping changes in 2011. “It was just a couple of months, but…

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Senate President Andy Gardiner on Wednesday softened the hardline, anti-Medicaid expansion rhetoric at the Capitol. The Senate President told a group of reporters that he expects there will be a bill filed in the Senate to expand Medicaid to cover uninsured working adults who don’t make enough money to qualify for vouchers to buy qualified health plans–commonly called Obamacare plans– through the federal exchange but make too much money to qualify for the current Medicaid program. “Certainly, the Senate has…

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Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Elizabeth “Liz” Dudek just finished implementing a statewide mandatory managed care program for the fifth largest Medicaid program in the nation. What does she plan to do now? Dudek rattles off an ambitious “to do” list s that she said she’d like to accomplish in the next four years as she hopes to “ride out”  Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s second term in office as agency secretary. “After that,” Dudek says, “There are probably some…

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After a two year hiatus, Sen. Don Gaetz is back on the Senate Health Care Committee. And he has a lot to say about telemedicine. While Gaetz said the Legislature needs to tread lightly so it doesn’t “put a straight jacket on health care,” he does support including in any telemedicine bill reimbursement provisions for doctors. Reimbursement was one of  several issues that bogged telemedicine down last session, when the House of Representative and the Senate failed to come to…

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Rick Scott continues to round out his administration for his second term and on Monday announced the reappointment of John Armstrong, M.D., as Secretary of the Department of Health and state Surgeon General. In a press release announcing Armstrong’s reappointment, Scott called Armstrong a “great leader at DOH” who has worked “to support public health goals, link Floridians to needed health care services and educate communities on good health habits.” Scott also praised Armstrong for taking “every possible step to…

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The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) will reintroduce a proposed rule on enrolling patients into community-based service programs that  it withdrew last week. AHCA spokesperson Shelisha Coleman said in an email that the the agency withdrew proposed rule 59G-4.193, “in order to allow the (a)gency sufficient time to respond to comments received during the last public comment period.” Concerns were raised by a number of  special interest groups that the proposed rule exempts categories of people from having to go…

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An insurance industry-dominated panel on Tuesday rejected a proposal to expand Medicaid to about 800,000 Floridians who don’t qualify for insurance subsidies because they don’t make enough money. Chaired by Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty, the Florida Health Insurance Advisory Board preliminarily approved a number of recommendations to submit to the Florida Legislature to consider in the upcoming 2015 session. Insurance agent and board member W. Adam Castoff and Florida CHAIN representative and board member Leah Barber-Heinz both recommended that…

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