TALLAHASSEE -- A chorus of opposition is starting to take hold in the Florida Cabinet to Gov. Rick Scott’s stunning support for expanding Medicaid, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying she objects to the idea. “I am opposed to this dramatic expansion of Medicaid, because of...
Some Florida healthcare providers are pushing lawmakers to make changes that would allow them to offer more services to patients. But other physician groups are concerned that the move could result in worse care for consumers. They’re called scope-of-practice fights. And they happen when one group...
MIAMI -- Florida welfare officials are proposing a bill that targets Medicaid fraud among patients who hide their assets with family and friends to get the taxpayer-funded program to pay for their nursing home care. Patients are allowed to hire a relative or friend to oversee...
South Florida’s healthcare industry accounted for 60 percent of the region’s economic recovery since the recession began. That’s one startling conclusion from some local economic data released Friday morning. The new estimates of economic output show 2011 was a feeble year for the region’s $263 billion economy,...
A grande problemo for the Republican Party is how to win over Hispanic voters who flocked to President Barack Obama in 2012. But even with Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio supporting immigration reform, Latinos are still concerned about other issues, said David Plouffe, a recently departed White...
TALLAHASSEE — In a win for the nursing-home industry, the state Supreme Court said that a lawsuit stemming from the death of a former Leesburg nursing-home patient should go to arbitration. The unanimous ruling comes amid numerous legal battles about arbitration agreements that people have signed as...
RENTON, N.J. -- Johnson & Johnson has again recalled thousands of its hip implants, 2 1/2 years after the problem-plagued health care giant issued a recall of two other types of its artificial hips. Spokeswomen for J&J's DePuy Orthopaedics unit said Thursday that the company recalled the...
The Jacksonville Metropolitan Community Benefit Partnership, under the leadership and management of the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida, has released the 2012 Community Health Needs Assessment for the Jacksonville Metropolitan Area, as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The leaders from Baptist Health, Brooks...
The Obama administration last week gave Gov. Rick Scott one of the two waivers he's requested for managing Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the very poor. The waiver affects long-term care for 87,000 low-income seniors and disabled people who now receive nursinghome or in-home care under Medicaid. Given that Medicaid consumes...
This week the federal government signed off on the first part of a plan that could eventually steer more than 3 million low-income Floridians on Medicaid into a managed care, or HMO system. The decision comes two years after Florida lawmakers approved the conversion in an...