Florida Gov. Rick Scott plans to sue the CMS, accusing the agency of unconstitutionally trying to force the state to expand Medicaid by ending funding that now helps Florida hospitals pay for uncompensated care for low-income and uninsured patients.
In a statement last week, Scott called the CMS' actions “appalling.”
The federal government intends to stop sending Low Income Pool (LIP) funding at the end of June. The state has been receiving more than $1 billion a year in assistance under a Medicaid waiver.
“Not only does President Obama's end to LIP funding in Florida violate the law by crossing the line into a coercion tactic for Obamacare, it also threatens poor families' access to the safety net healthcare services they need,” Scott said.
The CMS said in a statement that LIP funding has long been set to expire this summer. “Florida, like all states, is free to implement Medicaid expansion or not,” the agency said. “Florida is requesting an additional optional extension, which raises a different question: whether it promotes the objectives of the Medicaid statute to use demonstration authority when the state has statutory options that would better serve the low-income population.”
Earlier in the week, Victoria Wachino, acting deputy administrator and director of the CMS' Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, sent Florida Medicaid officials a letter saying the CMS made it clear last year that the LIP would not continue in its current form. She also wrote that the Affordable Care Act established a “more comprehensive approach to providing healthcare coverage, including Medicaid,” and that expanding Medicaid would reduce uncompensated care in Florida.
“We believe that the future of the LIP, sufficient provider rates and Medicaid expansion are linked in considering a solution for Florida's low-income citizens, safety net providers and taxpayers,” Wachino wrote.
Scott said the Obama administration is attempting to coerce the state into expanding Medicaid and running afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 decision in NFIB v. Sebelius. The justices ruled in that landmark case that the healthcare law's requirement that all states expand Medicaid or lose their Medicaid funding was unconstitutional coercion by the federal government.
