Governor Rick Scott, the man who shuns nearly all dealings with the media in favor of the one-sided approach, tried it again over the weekend, writing an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times to push misinformation on the upcoming state Medicaid expansion prior to a meeting with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.
In his piece, he began with a story of his own family's struggle over caring for one of his brothers, and recounting a Shriners Hospital For Children that "came to the rescue." Probably a hint towards the Republican Party's approach to health care suggesting those in need should rely on some sort of charity as opposed to government programs like Medicaid, of which Scott has made clear he is not a fan.
From that op-ed, Scott wrote the following on Medicaid costs:
There are two key questions driving our consideration of this issue: How will we pay for it, and will it decrease costs and improve quality and access to health care for Florida families?
Today, Florida's Medicaid program provides health care to more than 3.3 million Floridians. That means that one in six Floridians have their health care coverage provided by tax revenues of the remaining Floridians, and Medicaid is approximately 30 percent of our state budget. The cost of Medicaid has been growing at 3 ½ times the growth rate of the state's general revenue for years. This crowds out our ability to invest in K-12 education, state universities and other priorities.
Growing government is never free. Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration recently reported that adding people to Medicaid under the new law would result in a total cost to Florida taxpayers of more than $63 billion over 10 years. The report also pointed out that the federal government has a long history of dramatically underestimating the cost of government programs.
Two things jump out here. The larger one is Scott's claims on the costs to taxpayers: $63 billion over 10 years. The Times wrote a follow up of their own on these claims, and pointed out Scott's fuzzy figures:
This figure is just plain wrong. In August, state economists estimated that Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $8 billion over 10 years. It's ridiculous to think that cost estimates have more than tripled since the summer. In fact, Florida legislative staff charged with estimating the cost to the state of the Medicaid expansion question the accuracy of the $26 billion figure. In an email exchange, the budget chief of the House Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee and Amy Baker, the Legislature's chief economist, tell a staffer at the Agency for Health Care Administration that the agency's figure makes a faulty assumption that the federal government won't cover the cost of the Medicaid expansion to the extent the law requires.
Scott has his own opinion on the wisdom of government covering health care for the poor, but he doesn't get to make up his own facts on what it would cost. Expanded Medicaid is a bargain for the state. Sebelius should be wary of the governor's inflated numbers, and Scott should use Monday's meeting to get all of his questions answered and find a way to make this work for Florida.
I'm sure no one will ever be able to persuade Rick Scott to use actual facts when it comes to his idea of the government's role in taking care of it's citizens, especially when it comes to health care. After all, his former company holds the record for the largest fines ever for Medicare fraud, a fact Scott has conveniently removed from his bio, not to mention that he took the fifth 75 times in just one deposition in another court action involving the same company. Unfortunately for Scott, as inconvenient as those facts may be, they remain facts. Scott hasn't fooled the Times in this case, and he won't be fooling Secretary Sebelius either.
Nice try.
The other point that jumped out at me had nothing to do directly with Medicaid, but Scott nonetheless managed to slip it in there anyway. It was his mention of the high cost "consequences" of his magical Medicaid numbers:
This crowds out our ability to invest in K-12 education, state universities and other priorities.
As Floridians well know, Scott has done his best to slash education funds beginning with his first budget and continuing with cuts to higher education along with encouraging "bargain basement degrees." Last year he tried to pretend those first budget cuts never happened by putting a fraction of those cuts back in when it proved damaging to his approval ratings, or the lack thereof. He thought no one would notice those facts either.
Again, nice try.
Now that he remains so unpopular, even though it's two years out, Scott is trying to remake his image as he pins his hopes on reelection. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume he plans to put more distance between himself and his education gutting history. Not only has he tried to place blame on the Republicans in the legislature for his cuts, do we assume that now he will also use Medicaid funding and the President's health care law as a scapegoat for his incompetence, and that Floridians are stupid and won't notice that as well? Worse yet, does he plan more education cuts if he's forced to follow the law as intended rather than rewriting the rules to suit himself?
If so, good luck with that. Floridians won't forget, and most aren't that naive.
They know the true scapegoat hasn't been banished to the wilderness, it's running for reelection in 2014.
