Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has
gone ahead with his irrational lawsuit against the federal government in his efforts to refuse federal Medicaid money that is attached to Obamacare, funds that would solve both a healthcare and a budgetary crisis in his state. Instead, Scott wants other federal money that isn't tainted by the dread Obamacare. The basis of Scott's suit is that his state is being "coerced" into taking one kind of federal money instead of another.
The Republican governor points to a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying the federal government can’t coerce states to expand Medicaid, which he says the Obama administration is doing by withholding hospital funds.
“President Obama’s sudden end to the Low Income Pool (LIP) health care program to leverage us for Obamacare is illegal and a blatant overreach of executive power,” Mr. Scott said in a statement.
But legal experts say that Supreme Court case doesn’t necessarily apply. That’s because the hospital funds Mr. Scott wants are part of an optional program, and the federal government has broad discretion over it.
Scott and the Florida legislature were actually
informed in May, 2014, that they could only count on one more year of funding in the LIP program. This is not a sudden or capricious decision on the part of the federal government. They've had a year to get used to the idea and come up with an alternative—the clearest being Medicaid expansion.
The state has hired noted Obamacare foe Paul Clement to argue its case. He successfully argued against universal Medicaid expansion before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012, which landed the state in this mess in the first place—that mess being a budget shortfall and a big fight between the state House and Senate. The Senate insists that the state take the Medicaid expansion money, the House says no. Meanwhile, Republicans in both chambers want tax cuts, and they can't get those cuts without figuring out how to replace the revenue. Without the $2 billion in funding for the LIP program, Florida hospitals won't be able to operate. With all of that going on, and a June 1 budget deadline looming, the House chose to adjourn on Tuesday, forcing Scott to have to call a special session at some point. There's virtually no scenario in which the courts could sort out Scott's suit before the budget deadline.
But Scott and his House (with a lot of encouragement from the Koch brothers) are going to continue to hold their collective breath. All because they don't want to get the wrong kind of federal money.