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The Legislature passed a sweeping bill aimed at overhauling the child welfare system Friday and is planning to devote tens of millions of dollars to hiring new investigators under a separate budget request after hundreds of child-abuse related deaths in the past five years. The most significant change to the bi-partisan bill, which unanimously passed the House 117-0, clearly states that protecting a child from abuse is paramount and more important than keeping a family together. That’s a significant shift…

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In the wake of dozens of child abuse-related deaths, Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would add 400 new child protective investigators, but critics worry it overlooks funding to treat mental health and substance abuse problems that are at the root of most child deaths. Gov. Rick Scott has proposed giving the Department of Children and Families $32 million to hire more investigators in hopes of reducing caseloads and high turnover rates in the agency. The bill also seeks…

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A wealthy Florida doctor whose offices were raided by the FBI and who allowed a U.S. senator to use his private jet is again under scrutiny for receiving more money from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program than any other doctor. A massive data dump from federal health officials this week showed South Florida ophthalmologist Dr. Salomon Melgen received nearly $21 million in 2012 from the tax-payer funded Medicare program – more than any other doctor in the country. Melgen has not…

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Florida’s Republican lawmakers remain staunchly opposed to expanding Medicaid – a system they’ve repeatedly said is too expensive and doesn’t improve health outcomes. Yet Florida’s Medicaid rolls are expanding under the Affordable Care Act. That’s because people trying to sign up for health insurance under Obama’s new health law are finding out – to their surprise – that they qualify for Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor. Some 245,000 Floridians were added to the Medicaid rolls between…

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The calls may come in the middle of the night and from hospitals more than an hour away. Someone is having a stroke and is en route an emergency room in the Florida Keys, but there aren’t any neurologists on call. Within 15 minutes, a University of Miami neurologist pops onto a computer screen and can order an IV drug that should be given within three hours. It’s that sort of potentially life-saving technology that some lawmakers say will drive…

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A coalition of black and Hispanic civil rights groups and pastors is challenging the grounds of a lawsuit that seeks to overturn Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The groups said Friday that the lawsuit threatens to violate the rights of the Florida voters who approved the ban by a wide margin in November 2008. The ban, which defines marriage as “the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife” and states that no other…

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As federal health officials are aggressively courting young adults to sign up for health insurance with celebrity endorsement and social media campaigns, they are also getting significant help from the very demographic they’re targeting. Busy medical, nursing and law students across Florida are getting certified as counselors and are staffing enrollment events as the March 31 deadline to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act looms. Many of the students were active in outreach programs to provide medical…

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