Tagged: Gov. Rick Scott

Gov. Rick Scott is touting a deal with Amazon to move 3,000 jobs to Florida, but some concerns are being raised about the quality of the jobs, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Other Amazon warehouses have been the subject of newspaper reports that the buildings lacked air-conditioning, that workers fainted from the heat, and that injuries went unreported.   

Was U.S. Senator Bill Nelson right when he said Gov. Rick Scott had turned down a $1 million grant that would have enabled state government to regulate carrier rates until the new health law.

Yes, PolitiFact says.

(UPDATED) In a long-awaited move, federal health officials on Friday granted Florida's request to expand its five-county pilot Medicaid managed-care project statewide.  Mindful of how some Florida Medicaid HMOs have behaved in the past, the deal includes what an independent analyst called "unprecedented consumer protections."

Earlier this year, both Govs. Jan Brewer of Arizona and Rick Scott of Florida surprised political pundits by coming out in support of Medicaid expansion. Both Republican governors had been fierce critics of the Affordable Care Act, but they said they favored the expansion because it would hurt the people of their state to turn down federal funds.

But the outcomes were quite different. Brewer muscled it through the Arizona Legislature, winning victory on Thursday after months of uncertainty and bare-knuckle politics. 

Florida Blue, one of the most generous donors to state political campaigns, usually gets what it wants. In the case of a bill that Gov. Rick Scott signed on Friday, its chief lobbyist, Paul Sanford, actually wrote it, according to the Florida Times-Union.

Gov. Rick Scott, once one of the nation’s most vociferous opponents of the Affordable Care Act,  captured national headlines in February when he changed his tune; he urged the Florida Legislature to use the law’s Medicaid expansion funds to cover the uninsured. That didn’t happen. Now he appears to have changed his position -- or at least his message -- again, the Associated Press reports.

In a column published in The Tampa Tribune, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson said "extremists" in the Florida Legislature have engaged in a deliberate attempt to undermine implementation of the new health law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Nelson, D-FL, listed several instances by the Legislature and the executive branch in Florida of failure to accept funds that would help to cover the uninsured and to regulate insurers.

Gov. Rick Scott tried again this past legislative session to make all state employees pay the same amount for health insurance.

Part of Scott's campaign pledge was to bring state health insurance costs in line with the national average.

Scott proposed all state workers pay $50 for individual coverage or $180 for family coverage every month, saving the state about $43.4 million.

That's what rank-and-file state employees pay now.

Gov. Rick Scott, flanked by representatives of environmental groups and the sugar industry,  signed Everglades-restoration legislation Tuesday intended to raise millions of dollars through a sugar-cane tax and state contributions over the next decade, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Gov. Rick Scott signed the 2013-14 budget, which includes a $65 million cushion for hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of Medicaid patients as the program goes through its transition to a new payment system.

Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell says Rick Scott would be smart to summon lawmakers back to Tallahassee for a special session on Medicaid expansion. There are moral, logical and financial arguments for doing it, he says, but most important to a public official facing re-election, there is a political argument for it, as well.