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Gov. Rick Scott - LIP funding

Florida Governor Rick Scott.
Florida Governor Rick Scott , flgov.com

Do you remember that time in 2013 when a slightly bedraggled Gov. Rick Scott, seemingly aiming for that weird gut of compassion, went onto television to say that he couldn’t possibly refuse Medicaid expansion for all of the ailing people in the state?

It turns out that his whole dance of populism was tied to waiver negotiations with the feds. He quickly changed camps when he got his way. Now it’s even worse.

All of the sudden, it’s Medicaid’s fault for being a broken system that has grown in cost at three times the rate of state revenues. All the sudden it’s all about the poor people increasingly going to the emergency room for service. And, let it be noted – as it has by the fact checkers at the Palm Beach Post – all of Scott’s recent legal bluster against the Federal Department of Health and Human Services for allegedly tying Low Income Pool funding into the state’s failure to expand Medicaid, that’s not even founded in truth; the feds already extended LIP funding for the state through June, 2015, and the state was told there would be no more extensions after a decade at the trough.

Scott went to meet with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on May 6 to fight it out and walked away “disappointed,” thereafter filing an injunction against the feds, something even noted Republicans are wary of.

“I tend to think lawsuits in general are not productive,” Senate President Andy Gardiner said, according to the Atlantic, “especially when you have to convince the person you’re suing to give you money,”