The Health Care Debate

The start of the 2005 Legislative Session is right around the corner, and Governor Bush and his Republican majority are signaling that the privatization of Medicaid will be among their top priorities. Now is the time for morally concerned Floridians to act.

The Governor’s Medicaid privatization plan would move Medicaid recipients into HMO’s, and give them the responsibility for determining what benefits that Medicaid recipients will receive, meaning his Republican majority can claim no responsibility for cutting benefits. He believes that Medicaid spending is out-of-control, and only by privatizing Medicaid can we control costs (failing to mention that private insurance costs are growing even faster).

However, the Republicans are missing the larger problem--- the rising cost of all health care in America. As the Orlando Sentinel pointed out on Monday, “all health spending is out of control [and] Florida Medicaid's per-person cost has risen more slowly than private insurance. What's out of control is the growing numbers who turn to Medicaid because costs of private insurance are out of control.” The problems with Medicaid are nothing but a symptom of our nation’s health insurance crisis---and that is where we should be focusing our efforts.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (http://www.kff.org/), more than 45 million Americans are uninsured, with 21 percent of Floridians under the age of 65 currently without health insurance, including 620,000 Florida children. This figure does not include the more than 1 million children who currently receive their health insurance either through Medicaid or through Healthy Kids, an optional program where low-income families can purchase health care for their children. In fact, fifty percent of all Medicaid recipients are children, placed there because our state’s primarily low-wage job market has left too many children in poverty.

But rather than address this moral crisis, the Republicans would rather scapegoat Medicaid. Their plan would “cap” (code word ‘cut’) Medicaid spending, without doing anything to address the state’s health insurance crisis. Since Medicaid primarily—if not nearly wholly -- helps children, the blind, disabled, and elderly, guess who will be hurt by the changes? And its not like these Floridians are suddenly not going to get sick---instead, they will be treated at emergency rooms, with the cost of their care covered by increasing costs for everyone else who has health insurance.

It is noteworthy that while this debate is going on, the Republicans are considering a special tax break for the liquor industry, and another for Florida’s 250,000 wealthiest residents. The annual cost of these special breaks is roughly $350 million, or enough to provide health insurance for more than 360,000 children.

The legislature will be holding meetings around across the state regarding these proposals, with the first in Tampa on Friday, February 11, 2005. Further dates will be posted on this site.
You can make a difference. Your Democratic legislators are working hard to ensure that Medicaid “reform” isn’t an effort to reduce health care for children, the disabled, and frail elderly, but they need your help. Please contact your legislators (e-mails can be found at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/ and http://www.flsenate.gov/), and let them know that you believe we have a moral responsibility to provide for the needs of our most vulnerable.


--Steve Schale, Florida House of Representatives Democratic Staff