Medicaid and KidCare will be spared, but many other sectors of health care will feel the ax if Congress and the administration fail to prevent the automatic spending cuts called "sequestration," scheduled to begin Friday.
The big hits will be to hospitals, doctors and other parts of health care that depend in part on Medicare, which will take a 2 percent cut.
The Florida Hospital Association has released an estimate that loss to hospitals in the state over 10 years would be over $2 billion, starting with $130 million this year and gradually increasing.
The 10-year estimate of cuts to hospitals in Miami-Dade and Broward alone would be $358 million over 10 years, The Miami Herald reports.
Other big cuts would come to the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Indian Health Services. Altogether the cuts would total $85 billion, the Washington Post reports.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/22/3248616/south-florida-hospitals-could.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy
In addition, according to estimates released by The White House, Florida will lose about:
--$5 million in grants for substance-abuse prevention and treatment.
--$1.8 million for responding to public health threats such as infectious diseases, natural disasters and terrorist events.
--$1.4 million for HIV testing, which will cut the number of tests by nearly 36,000.
--$3.8 million for meals for the elderly.
--$5.2 million in funding for clean air and water, plus $1.1 million for fish and wildlife protection.
--A bit more than half a million dollars for childhood vaccines, resulting in immunization for 7,450 fewer children.