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Florida Legislature Rejects Medicaid Expansion

 

 

Transcript:

This week in Washington—the Florida Legislature rejects Medicaid expansion and HHS approves another round of partnership exchanges. You are tuning in to the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems health policy update for the week of March 11, 2013.

In February, Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced that he would accept the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) Medicaid expansion for his state. He accepted it with the caveat that Medicaid would only be expanded for three years, allowing Florida to revisit the expansion to evaluate progress prior to committing for a longer-term. However, on March 11, the Florida State Senate committee rejected the expansion. Instead, the committee offered a compromise where the state will take the increased federal expansion funds and use it to pay private insurance premiums for low-income people. Florida is not the only state looking to use their expansion dollars in this way—Arkansas, Indiana and Ohio are exploring the use of private insurance coverage for their low-income populations.

To date, 31 states and the District of Columbia will likely expand their Medicaid program to the expansion populations. Most of those states have publicly declared their intention to expand, while a handful have not been as vocal but will still likely expand their Medicaid program. That leaves 20 states that have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs at this time.

In other ACA implementation news, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week announced the conditional approval of the partnership exchange blueprints for Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and West Virginia. Arkansas, Delaware and Illinois are still waiting for approval of their partnership exchange blueprints. Utah had received approval of their state-based exchange. However, the state is now working with HHS to create a partnership exchange wherein HHS would run the individual exchange while Utah continues to run its existing small business exchange. That brings the total to eight states that are seeking a partnership exchange.

As for the other 43 states, 16 and the District of Columbia have indicated that they will run their own state-based exchange, while 24 states have opted for the federally-facilitated exchange. Two states remain undecided—Mississippi and Florida. Mississippi’s state-based exchange blueprint was rejected by HHS and it is unclear how they will proceed, while Florida has been silent on which exchange structure it will pursue.

Thanks for listening to another edition of This Week in Washington. I’m Zina Gontscharow. This Week in Washington is off next week due to NAPH’s Spring Legislative Event. Join us the week of March 25 for another update.

 

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