State Government Gov. Scott Drops Fed Lawsuit, Claims Victory After Obama Says Indigent Hospital Care Funding to Continue

TALLAHASSEE — In April, Gov. Rick Scott said he would sue the federal government over its decision to stop subsidizing Florida hospitals for providing care to indigent and uninsured patients. On Thursday—one day after the Obama administration announced it would continue to give funding to hospitals, although at a greatly reduced rate—Scott said he would drop the lawsuit while claiming it was key to the feds' change in decision.

Since 2005, the Low Income Pool program has given the state's hospitals more than a billion per year in funding. For 2015-2016, Florida hospitals will be given $1.2 billion by the feds; from 2017 on, funding is set at a cap of $608 million. In addition, $400 million in hospital indigent care funding was put in this year's state budget by the legislature in order to receive $600 million in federal matching funds for this year.

When the announcement was made that funding for the program would be dropped, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid advised that the decision was due to Florida's decision to opt out of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. When Scott announced the lawsuit, he called the program's discontinuance an attempt to "coerce" Florida into accepting expansion.

Gov. Scott, who has been against expansion—not counting a period during his 2014 campaign when he changed his position to support it, before switching back to opposition after he was reelected—has ensured that Florida will not receive the $2.8 billion that would otherwise be given to the state annually from expansion.

In a statement, Scott made an unsubstantiated claim that suing the government ensured that LIP funding would continue. "It is unfortunate it took a lawsuit to make the right thing happen," said Scott.