Last week, a House subcommittee rejected Rick Scott's recommendation to accept the federal government's plan to expand Medicaid coverage in Florida. Today, a Senate subcommittee did the same thing, voting 7-4 to reject the proposal which would add approximately one million Floridians without health insurance to the rolls, while costing Florida nothing for three years and 10 percent (to the fed's 90 percent) after that.
Unlike in the House, which offered no alternatives, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Joe Negron, announced a plan that would have the state bypass Medicaid expansion but access the money available from the feds and have the state create its own plan to help the uninsured.
Negron's plan would include five components: 1) a "benchmark," where everybody would have to pay some minimum amount for coverage (he said it could be on a sliding scale system). 2) Negron wants to use Florida Healthy Kids as the vehicle for the new plan. 3) Patients could have Health Reimbursement Accounts. "As you build up money in your account for exchange for healthy behaviors, you can use these funds. They could also be used for medical expenses that aren't covered." 4) He said that being "on" Medicaid connotes dependency. "I don't want people to be 'on something,'" he said. "I want them to 'have' insurance." 5) And doing what Republicans in Washington haven't been able to do — kill Medicaid. "This will be a beginning of the transformation of a Medicaid system," Negron said.
