The “Cover Florida” plan, which offers “bare-bones” health insurance to low-income residents, likely will not reduce the number of uninsured, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Orlando Sentinel reports. According to the report, “Bare-bones plans provide limited or no coverage for important benefits such as inpatient care, and [...]
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has signed a bill allowing uninsured Floridians to purchase affordable health insurance plans largely free of expensive, superfluous mandated health insurance coverages.
Experts are lauding the new legislation, the Cover Florida Health Access Act, as a positive step toward affordable health insurance and a model program for other states.
Mandates Cause Uninsurance
Every [...]
Health care experts are jumping to the defense of a new Florida law allowing health insurance providers to sell health insurance coverage plans free of expensive mandates.
The measure (see “Florida Passes Model Legislation Allowing More Health Insurance Choice,” Health Care News, August 2008) has come under fire from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [...]
Three Florida HMOs have said they will continue participating in a “Medicaid Reform” plan after the Agency for Health Care Administration agreed to reduce payments by an average of 3% on Sept. 1, instead of 5% as previously announced, Florida Health News reports (Florida Health News, 9/2).
In letters to the state agency last month, [...]
In the past 12 months, 245 South Florida defendants have been charged with filing nearly $793.5 million in false Medicare claims, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida R. Alexander Acosta said on Tuesday, the Miami Herald reports. Acosta credited the federal Medicare Fraud Strike Force for increasing the number of prosecutions.
In 2007, [...]
A Florida state law allowing certain workers to keep dependents on their health insurance policies until age 30 was scheduled to take effect on Wednesday, but some of the specifics of the law still are being discussed, the Orlando Sentinel reports. According to the Sentinel, insurers, state regulators and employers still are trying to determine [...]
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s (R) Cover Florida program and two other proposed measures intended to expand health care coverage to more state residents have stalled, Florida Health News reports. State officials on Wednesday were expected to announce which of the nine health insurance companies, which submitted bids to offer basic low-cost health plans to residents, [...]
About three in 10 Medicaid beneficiaries participating in a Florida pilot program were not aware of changes brought about by the program, namely that they were expected to choose a new health insurance policy for themselves, according to a study published on Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs, the Florida Times-Union reports (Cox, Florida Times-Union, [...]
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration last week sent a proposal to Gov. Charlie Crist recommending that a Medicaid managed care pilot project be expanded to 20 additional counties, Florida Health News reports. The pilot, which currently operates in five counties under a federal Medicaid waiver, requires that beneficiaries sign up for managed care [...]
Thousands of children in Florida’s KidCare program over the past five months may have been improperly dropped from the program’s rolls because of a glitch in the state’s computer system, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports. According to the News-Journal, Rich Robleto — executive director of Florida Healthy Kids, which administers KidCare — said 62,500 children [...]