Florida's Senate President Andy Gardner
offered a compromise Tuesday to try to get the state's legislature out of a budget impasse. That impasse could be resolved, the Senate has maintained, by accepting Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. So, to try to get a recalcitrant House and Gov. Rick Scott to agree, Gardner modified the Senate proposal.
The Senate's proposal, referred to by Gardiner as FHIX 2.0, bypasses putting people into Medicaid starting in July as was initially proposed and instead requires those eligible for the FHIX coverage to wait until January. The state plan also would have to obtain federal government approval.
The proposal also gives people the option of staying on the federal health insurance exchange, rather than going into the state's privately-run option.
The proposal requires federal approval and, if the federal government rejects any piece of it or recommends changes, the plan would have to come back to the Legislature for final approval.
"We look at next week as starting the dialogue or the discussion," Gardiner said.
That was
quickly rejected by Scott and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli who still want their federal healthcare money to come in a form that is somehow not tainted by Obamacare. But here's who's really pulling the strings on this one:
Americans for Prosperity also objected to the changes. State Director Chris Hudson, said the changes aren't a compromise. The Senate, Hudson said in a release, "is just dressing up a failed model from other states and hoping it sticks."
The legislature begins its special session next week, in which it will attempt to fulfill Scott's impossible dream of a budget that "keeps Florida's economy growing will cut taxes and give Floridians back more of the money they earn, not inevitably raise taxes in order to implement ObamaCare and grow government." The people left out of that dream are the 800,000 uninsured Floridians who should be getting Medicaid.