Months after Florida House Republican leaders rejected federal money to expand health coverage for the low-income uninsured, a state agency will ask them to request money under a different Medicaid bucket to give to hospitals for charity care.
This bucket, called the “Low Income Pool,” would be expanded from $1.4 billion a year to about $3 billion under the Agency for Health Care Administration’s proposal.
While a lot of money, it's somewhat less than the Medicaid funds the Legislature turned down in April, saying Medicaid was "broken." That was an estimated $51 billion over a decade, or about $5 billion a year, and would have provided private health coverage to more than 760,000 of the low-income uninsured.
The Senate and Gov. Rick Scott said they would take the money, but the House said no.
(The AHCA request for an increase in LIP funds is reported by the Times/Herald bureau, printed in full in the Herald and Times, but readers may encounter paywalls. If so, some of the story can be found at the Naked Politics blog.)