Florida Hospitals Lobby to Preserve Medicaid Programs, Avoid Bad Debt

The Florida Hospital Association is enlisting the help of the public to prevent Medicaid cuts that could increase member hospitals bad debt expense.

At the association’s request, thousands of Floridians signed petitions or sent emails to their representatives urging them not to eliminate state’s Medically Needy and Aged and Disabled programs funded through Medicaid. The FHA said in a press release that the Medically Needy program serves uninsured Floridians that suffer catastrophic injury or serious illness that have depleted their personal finances.

To emphasize the importance of the programs, the FHA delivered the petitions to the state Capitol in Tallahassee in an ambulance and carried them into the building on a gurney.

“If Medically Needy takes the hit lawmakers are proposing, it will cut the only lifeline available to uninsured victims of traumatic accidents and catastrophic illness, along with organ transplant recipients,” Mary Ellen Ross, executive director of the Florida Transplant Survivors Coalition, said in a press release. “It could literally mean death to many of these people.” Ross herself has been in the Medically Needy program since 1999 when she received a liver and bone marrow transplant.

Florida hospitals are already under financial pressure from serving the disabled and uninsured. Earlier this month the FHA said operating margins at Florida’s hospitals fell from 2.4 percent in 2005 to 0.8 percent in 2006, (“Bad Debt, Uncompensated Care Take Toll on Florida Hospitals,” April 17), the most recent figures available. Meanwhile, uncompensated care rose to nearly $2.4 billion in 2006, up from $2.1 billion a year earlier.

In the petitions, supporters asked the Governor and legislators to invest $158 million of state funding into hospital funding for the two Medicaid programs by tapping into other programs, such as the Rainy Day funds. That would allow Florida to receive another $196 million in federal funds already set aside to help the state’s poor and disabled, the FHA said.

Tony Carvalho, president of the safety net Hospital Alliance of Florida, said all Floridians will be impacted if the proposed Medicaid cuts happen. He said local communities will be forced to raise indigent care taxes and more sick people will crowd into hospital emergency rooms, increasing the amount of free care they provide, which raises the cost for everyone.

“Cutting or reducing these programs will create human tragedy after tragedy, as many of these patients will be placed in life-threatening situations,” Carvalho said.