Add another cut to the already long list of health care services that Gov. Rick Scott vetoed last week: $1.8 million dollars in vaccinations for postpartum women on Medicaid.
According to the recently released Florida “End of Session Report,” a provision in the Agency for Health Care Administration budget would have provided funding for Tdap vaccinations for women who just gave birth and are enrolled in Medicaid. However, this line of the budget was vetoed, along with other health services for mostly low-income women and children.
In a 2008 press release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency recommended the use of this vaccination for the “prevention of Pertussis, Tetanus, and Diphtheria among pregnant and postpartum and women and their infants.”
Scott’s cut is just another in a growing list of health services for women that were eliminated from the already-slim state budget. Among more than $2 million in services that were cut was also a pilot program that would provide specialized care to at-risk first-time mothers.
Scott has called programs he cut “special interest waste” and “short-sighted, frivolous spending programs.”
