A report issued last week by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured shows that Florida would suffer some of the deepest cuts in federal Medicaid spending under a plan proposed by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. #
The plan calls for the repeal of federal health care reforms and switching the shared state-federal Medicaid program to a block grant model, in which states would receive federal money to administer the program as they see fit. #
The proposed changes would cost Florida $82.8 billion in federal funding over the next decade, according to the report, or 44 percent less than it would receive under current law. Florida would trail only Wyoming’s much smaller program for the nation’s largest percentage decrease in federal funding. By 2021, federal Medicaid spending in Florida would be 54 percent lower than under current law. #
Here’s how the report sums up the national picture: #
Projected federal spending on Medicaid for the 10-year period 2012 to 2021 would fall by $1.4 trillion, a 34 percent decline. By 2021, states would receive $243 billion less annually in federal Medicaid money than they would under current law, a 44 percent reduction. #
The effect on enrollment in state Medicaid programs could vary widely. By 2021, between 31 million and 44 million fewer people nationally would have Medicaid coverage under the House Budget Plan relative to expected enrollment under current law, the analysis finds, examining three possible scenarios using different assumptions about how states might respond to lower federal funding. Most of those people, given their low incomes and few options for other coverage, would end up uninsured. #
Much of the decrease would come from the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which would cause a more than 27 percent drop in federal spending on Florida’s Medicaid program. Florida would be disproportionately affected because of its high number of uninsured and its low eligibility levels for Medicaid, which would have to be raised under the new law. #
Florida lawmakers last week passed a plan that would shift most of the state’s nearly 3 million Medicaid patients to HMOs and other forms of managed care, which will have to be approved by the federal government. Gov. Rick Scott and state legislative leaders, including Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Sen. Joe Negron, one of the leading architects of Florida’s Medicaid reform plan, have expressed support for a block-grant concept, which they said would give states the freedom to experiment with ways to save money on health care for the poor and disabled. #
