On Thursday incoming Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos and friends visit Tampa on the second leg of his "Health Care Solutions Tour."
Haridopolos and a traveling crew will visit three different sites in the Bay area: At the managed care group Amerigroup in Westshore, then the Brandon Regional Hospital, and finally the USF College of Medicine. But though the media has been cordially invited, members of some local organizations fear that "misconceptions" about the state's Medicaid program could go unaddressed (among his guests include Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman and state Senator Ronda Storms).
Laura Goodhue with Florida CHAIN said today that "Unless critical stakeholders participate in these discussions, any policies developed out of these meetings will be poorly informed, and therefore fatally flawed." She added that she was concerned about other misconceptions about the state's health care system:
"For example, the health tour press release states that the Affordable Care Act will 'force' an additional 1.4 million Floridians into Medicaid. However, qualifying for Medicaid will be a huge benefit for those who can't afford health insurance and no one is forced into it. The Medicaid expansion in 2014 will go a long way to reducing the number of Floridians without health insurance."
Haridopolos has said that the health care reform law is not an 'affordable solution' to Florida's health problems. But Goodhue said that Medicaid expansion will only increase the state's share of the Medicaid budget by less than 2% from 2014 to 2019.
"We think it's important the public understand that the Affordable Care Act is a significant step toward health equity, and that, without it, our broken health care system would continue to get much worse."
A correspondent for Health News Florida reports that The Florida Medical Association sent out a release "applauding" the senator's effort to "reach out to health care professionals …to identify new ways to improve access to care and control costs."
But FMA expressed concerns about what it called "troubling proposals that have been introduced in previous legislative sessions that would turn the Medicaid Program over to managed care companies.
Readers might recall that it was at this time a year ago that Haridopolos and his House counterpart, Dean Cannon, began a state wide tour/campaign promoting drilling for oil and natural gas off of Florida's state waters. After the Deepwater Horizon spill this spring however, both men acknowledged that such a plan was off the table for the duration of their time in Tallahassee.
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2010.