Jan 6, 2009 7:50 pm US/Eastern
Health Care Suffers In State Budget Crisis
A Final Vote On The Budget Cuts Will Be Held January 16th
Education & Health Care Appear To Be On The Chopping Block
TALLAHASSEE (CBS4) ―
Lawmakers continue sizing up how to take an ax to Florida's budget—as they decide how to eliminate $2.4 billion dollars worth of state programs for lack of money. If that sounds boring and bureaucratic, it will only take a visit to the local emergency room to change your mind.
CBS4's Michael Williams met Valerie Johnson there. She works at a local restaurant but does not make enough to afford health insurance. That means she doesn't have her own doctor, and when she started feeling abdominal pains, the only place to turn was the emergency room at South Miami Hospital. She'll try to pay the doctor bill over time, but says of her insurance quandary, "You know even if we are working you have to make ends meet, you have light bills to pay and water bills to pay."
In short, Johnson is like many of the nearly four million uninsured Floridians, including one million children. She works, but is barely hanging in. With the economy in freefall many more people like her will end up in hospital emergency rooms—the one place where they can't be turned away for lack of money. That is the law, but it promises an increased strain on the doctors and nurses manning the front lines.
Miami Beach state senator Dan Gelber sums up the situation bluntly. He says, "People are losing their jobs, and that means if your kid doesn't have a pediatrician you have to wait until they are sick enough to take them to the emergency room for primary care, which to me is morally wrong."
It doesn't make financial sense either. Emergency room care is also the most expensive care, but like so much else, the nation's historic economic crisis is exposing every flaw in our health care system with unrelenting force.
Florida's Medicaid rolls are bursting at the seams, and legislators turn to Washington for relief. In the meantime, they continue cutting across the board.
Substantial cuts to education funding, longer waits to renew your driver's license and higher fines for speeding tickets are all being considered as state legislators convened in day 2 of a special session in Tallahassee to try and figure out what to do about the deficit.
No one is immune, not schoolchildren or the elderly who populate nursing homes targeted for another ten percent cutback on top of the millions already slashed from those community care budgets. You'd think the pain would spark a thoughtful, lengthy discussion about the hundreds of millions of dollars lost to tax loopholes for businesses and services in Florida. That debate is not happening, at least not yet. So the pain worsens and the health care landscape—like so much else in the Sunshine State—increasingly threatens to be a much more desolate place until the economy rebounds.
Committees in both the House and Senate met Tuesday to consider about $1 billion in cuts along with tapping reserves, but no tax increases. Under a Republican bill that won approval from a House committee, public school spending would be cut by nearly $500 million and teachers and employees of financially distressed districts would be forced to take pay cuts.
The measure would affect districts declared to be in financial emergency because they have less than a 2 percent general fund balance in their operating budgets and have failed to correct the problem within 30 days of the declaration. Miami Dade is just one of seven school districts statewide that fell into this category as of June.
The House Prekindergarten-12 Appropriations Committee's 5-3 party-line vote to introduce the bill came after the chamber's Democratic leader, Rep. Franklin Sands of Weston, issued a statement saying "Republican budget cuts will impact every Floridian, working families, and our youngest and most vulnerable citizens."
The House and Senate have similar plans for a 2 percent reduction for public schools, about $140 per student. This could translate into cuts of $47 million for Miami-Dade schools and $35 million for Broward schools. Cuts of about 4 percent have been proposed for higher education. Spending on non-classroom related items, such as transportation and instructional materials, could face cuts up to 6 percent.
The House provision to cut school employees' pay in distressed districts may be no more than political rhetoric because it's not included in a similar proposed Senate bill. It's also unconstitutional, according to Ron Meyer, a lawyer for the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union.
Other options under consideration include increasing court fees, and traffic infraction fines, and reducing hours some Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles local offices are open.
Democrats are angry because Republicans have refused to take up other revenue-raising proposals. They include a $1-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax and Gov. Charlie Crist's plan to expand Seminole Indian gaming, with the state getting millions of dollars in return.
"It's sad that we're being forced to play with half a deck," said Rep. Martin Kiar, D-Davie. "It's not fair to cut the budget on the backs of our children."
Democrats, though, aren't the only ones unhappy with the impending cuts. Crist, a Republican, said lawmakers are poised to chop more than he'd like. He had proposed about $550 million in cuts.
"One of the concerns I have is that we make these reductions without hurting the end user -- the students as it relates to education, particularly -- and the most vulnerable in our state," Crist said. But he added, "We'll continue to have discussion about that and I remain hopeful."
Looking for other ways to cut spending, legislators are also considering cutting money used to promote tourism, a 10-percent cut in state reimbursement funding for nursing homes and substantial cuts in state-subsidized child care and child-protection services. Also under consideration - taking more than $100 million away from affordable housing programs and eliminating state employees who are receiving a state pension and are still on the payroll.
A final vote on the budget cuts will be held January 16th.
(© MMIX CBS Television Stations. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report)
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