Low Income Pool

Rick Scott, feds agree to $1.5B commitment for low income pool in Florida

Published on April 12, 2017 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Michael Moline

On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, M.D. as well as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, and Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) Secretary Justin Senior announced the federal government’s commitment to continuing funding for the Low Income Pool (LIP) in Florida. The amount will be over $1.5 billion annually, nearly a billion dollars more than what the Barack Obama administration provided to Florida. The LIP program…

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Anitere Flores bets on Washington intervention in Florida’s health care budget

Published on March 31, 2017 in Statewide by Michael Moline

Sen. Anitere Flores has built a health care budget around $600 in federal money for indigent care that she concedes might never arrive. “If it doesn’t happen, look, we’ll have to reassess the situation,” Flores said this week during a hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. “This is just the Senate’s version. There’s a whole other version that’s going on in the House,” she said. Pending negotiations with the House and Gov. Rick Scott, “I think it’s…

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Safety net hospital executives travel to Washington in search of money

Published on February 27, 2017 in 2017 by Michael Moline

Representatives of hospitals that provide a lot of charity care in Florida were headed to Washington Monday to urge federal health care officials and members of Congress to give them more money and freedom to spend it. Tony Carvalho, president of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, said members hope the Trump administration will prove friendlier than former President Obama, who trimmed Washington’s Low Income Pool financing for charity care from $2.2 billion to $608 million during the past three years. That harmed “hospitals’ ability…

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St. Pete Chamber releases legislative wish list for 2017 Session

Published on February 6, 2017 in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by Phil Ammann

As Tallahassee gears up for the annual 60-day Legislative Session, now a month away, the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce outlines its agenda for 2017. Among the leading matters for the Chamber are transportation, the unification of PSTA-HART, tourism, and state regulation of vehicles for hire — including a bill (SB 340) from state Sen. Jeff Brandes setting rules to promote the growth of transportation network companies (TNC) such as Uber and Lyft. However, at the top of the wish…

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Policy institute calls final state budget better than Rick Scott’s, but still lacking

Published on March 16, 2016 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Scott Powers

The Florida Policy Institute says the state’s new 2016 budget is better than Gov. Rick Scott’s initial proposal. The nonprofit’s report, though, says the spending plan still lacks adequate investment in health care, public education, prisons and other state services. The report praised the Legislature for killing Scott’s proposed $1 billion tax cut, saying it would just help businesses while reducing resources for urgent needs. It also criticized a tax cut for machinery and equipment the Legislature included, saying it…

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Why are Safety Net Hospitals crying foul over $134 million in new funding?

Published on March 3, 2016 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Peter Schorsch

It’s hard to criticize Florida’s safety net hospitals. They are the last-resort centers that provide medical care to uninsured or under-insured people. Who could argue against doing everything possible for such a deserving cause, right? But with those hospitals screaming about a proposed state funding formula, maybe we should all take a moment to catch our breath and look at the bigger picture. What we’ll see is that all Florida hospitals – even the for-profit institutions so easy to demonize in this kind of discussion…

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Jim Rosica’s Top 10 stories of 2015 in state government

Published on December 28, 2015 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Jim Rosica

From palace intrigues to pot, 2015 brought a plethora of material to the Capitol Press Corps. Trying to pick the top 10 state government stories is a subjective pursuit, to say the least, but here are the FloridaPolitics.com picks for the passing year: No. 1: The “firing” of Gerald Bailey Gov. Rick Scott actually forced out the state’s top cop in December 2014 but the repercussions of that move spilled well over into the new year. Scott originally announced Bailey’s…

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