Birth & Betrayal: The reaction

Since this article and others were published online Thursday, Florida leaders have acted quickly to reform the Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association. Among the reactions:

Florida’s top financial regulator, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, announced that the Office of Insurance Regulation, which he oversees, will audit the program and its $1.5 billion in assets. Patronis said he had initiated a separate “inspection” of NICA, as well.

“This program needs to treat these children with kindness instead of treating them as though they are a liability for shareholders,” Patronis said in a prepared statement.

NICA’s top administrator, Executive Director Kenney Shipley, released a statement on behalf of the program. She wrote that, while the Herald and ProPublica’s stories presented “a moving and emotional story of several families,” the investigation otherwise failed “to provide a completely accurate portrayal” of the program.

In a separate statement emailed to families that receive services from NICA, Shipley reiterated what she had said in the news release: NICA will work with Patronis to accomplish several goals the program long had fought, including adding a parents’ representative to the program’s board. She said the program also will work to break “down barriers to awareness and access for our families.”

“We aim to treat every family in the program fairly and individually, providing the benefits they are entitled to based on their specific needs,” she told parents in the email.

On Saturday morning, one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, Speaker of the House Chris Sprowls, issued a short statement on Twitter: “The reporting on NICA raises serious and disturbing questions,” he wrote.

He added: “The House will begin an investigation into whether NICA has lost sight of its statutory mission while still pushing accountability” through two pieces of legislation in the House. Other lawmakers have weighed in. One of two sponsors of a reform bill in the state Senate, Lauren Book, a Plantation Democrat, said she was conferring across the aisle with the bill’s other sponsor, Zephyrhills Republican Danny Burgess, to amend the legislation to broaden its scope.

Among the revisions the two are considering: Adding a NICA parent to the board, requiring the program to hire a parents’ “advocate” to help families navigate the program and seek care, and requiring the program to loosen its definition of “medical necessity” so that parents do not have to fight and appeal for treatment, therapy, medical equipment and wheelchairs for their children.