Gov. Rick Scott (Pic via flgov.com)
Of the more than $142 million that Gov. Rick Scott vetoed from the already tight $70 billion budget yesterday, more than $38 million came in cuts to health care services. The Florida Current reports that Scott stands by eliminating the projects because they “weren’t a good use of taxpayers’ money and did not serve a statewide need.”
The Current also reports that Scott insisted he “gave each project equal and fair consideration.”
Here is a breakdown of some of the more egregious cuts pointed out by the Current:
- $1.5 million for Lee Memorial Hospital that would have been used to establish a children’s hospital
- $1.5 million for certified rape crisis centers
- $250,000 for the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, which according to the Current was “targeted for the construction of a pediatric cardiac hybrid catheterization lab and operating room”
- $940,000 for the Department of Health (and removal of rule making authority) “to write rules that would have required children entering the seventh grade to receive one dose of meningococcal conjugate vaccine,” the Current reports.
As I reported yesterday, Scott also eliminated half a million dollars in funding for a community health center in Apopka that serves mostly migrant farmworkers and residents who are experiencing illnesses caused by years of pesticide use in the area, as well as $250,000 for Camillus House, a South Florida nonprofit “that provides humanitarian services to men, women, and children who are poor and homeless,” among many other programs.
