Florida may not get much help from SCHIP unless they find matching dollars.

[madfloridian]

There have been so many cuts by the state in health care funds that they may not qualify for money from the newly passed State Children's Health Insurance Program.

From the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

Congress approves major funding for kids' insurance, but Florida won't get much help

Congress passed a major funding boost for children's health insurance today, and President Barack Obama promptly signed it into law, but it won't help Florida much unless the state finds tens of millions of matching dollars in its depleted coffers.

The $33 billion boost for the State Children's Health Insurance Program would make 290,000 of Florida's estimated 797,000 uninsured kids eligible for low-cost coverage. However, even supporters said the state will be hard-pressed to cover a fraction of them.

Under SCHIP, for every $2.20 collected from Washington, the state must put up $1 as a match. Officials said Florida would have to find at least $39 million to collect the maximum from SCHIP, at a time when the state budget has a shortfall in the billions.

"We'll have a problem," said state Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, vice chair of an appropriations panel on health care. "Where are we going to get the money? It won't matter that they fixed this if we don't have the money to draw it down from Washington."

Florida is facing a similar situation in receiving funds from the stimulus package for education. They have cut public education so drastically that they may not qualify for federal funding for education.

Florida may not get desired stimulus funds because they cut funding to schools.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an $819 billion economic-recovery plan Wednesday. Under that bill, money in a special "state stabilization fund" would go only to states that could fund schools for the next two years at the levels they had in the 2005-06 school year.

But the state is below that threshold. In fact, school funding coming directly from the state is now lower than it was in the 2004-05 school year. With Florida's budget shortfall for next year ballooning toward $4 billion, it's not clear it could meet that requirement.

Perhaps the state needs to reconsider how it uses its public tax money.

More than two years ago, the state stopped giving tuition vouchers to students who wanted to leave failing public schools for private school. Since then, Florida's other two programs that pay private-school tuition for disabled kids or poor children have grown by 21 percent and 65 percent respectively. Today, 42,000 Florida students attend private school on the public's dime. And a new study touting voucher benefits could trigger more expansion.

Why is the number growing? As more people learn about the programs, more sign up. Low-income families are thrilled they can afford to find a school that meets their children's needs. Why are these 2 programs still allowed?

..."A 1999 lawsuit that challenged vouchers targeted only Opportunity Scholarships, offered to students at public schools that had received two F grades in a four-year period. The Florida Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to do that.

Jeb Bush is still on the scene working to cloud the issues on public education. He even has his own
education group.

We also saw Jeb's hand in reserving almost 800 million for CSX while all this cutting was going on. CSX...that is called corporate socialism I believe since that company earned over 2 billion last year.

I am glad I am retired from teaching, but I still have contact with many who are not so fortunate as to be retired yet. It's always a hard and painful conversation when we talk....not much good stuff going on that they can see.

The state just keeps cutting needy people from health care. It matters little that Crist may or will veto the last funding cuts. So much harm has been done during the Bush years, and it is still going on here in this state.

So those two areas of the stimulus package may be denied to Floridians. I wonder what else is coming.

[madfloridian]

1. Florida's congressional Dems praise SCHIP passage, seem unaware

that Florida will not benefit much.

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/02/browards_congressional_democra.html

[madfloridian]

2. More details of the drastic cuts from an article and post in 2008

"It's been easier for a single person to get help under the rules. That is, until recently. Now, as of July 1 of next year, it won't even help to go to this drastic measure because of cuts to the state budget.

The Florida Legislature plans to discontinue Medicaid payments to the medically needy, excluding pregnant women and children, and the elderly and disabled — a group that contains 40,000 individuals — effective July 1, in order to save the state nearly $700 million."

Then what this couple had to do to get chemotherapy for the wife...would no longer work. Taking away all the options.

"Nearly 50 years later, following two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the couple divorced, for no other reason than that they couldn't afford the costs of Emily's weekly $2,800 chemotherapy treatments for terminal bone cancer.

After learning from a friend that by dissolving their marriage Emily could qualify for Medicaid, the couple walked into a drugstore, picked up a guidebook on dissolutions and then marched into an Ohio courthouse in February 2005, their $75 divorce petition in hand.

"He (the judge) told us, ‘This was the first. I've never given anyone a dissolution that had been married this long,' " Rudy Friece recalled."

More drastic cuts.