Feds acting like ‘Sopranos’ over health care, Scott says
FORT LAUDERDALE — In an escalating war over health care, Gov. Rick Scott on Friday compared the Obama administration with a TV mobster family and accused the president of not caring for low-income families.
“They don’t care about the low-income families because they’re willing to walk away from a program. This is ‘The Sopranos,’ ” Scott said during an interview with Fox News on Thursday night. “They’re using bullying tactics to attack our state. It’s wrong. It’s outrageous.”
Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who is considering a run for president, is also weighing in, voicing support for a state Senate compromise that would eventually take federal funds and give them to families to purchase private insurance.
Scott announced Thursday that he planned to sue the federal government, which he accuses of withholding federal hospital funds from the state only because he and House Republicans don’t want to expand Medicaid to 800,000 low-income Floridians.
The fight with the federal government is over more than $1 billion in funds that help hospitals that care for low-income patients. The federal government says using federal money to buy health insurance directly for patients is more efficient than paying hospitals for their care.
“It’s difficult to explain why somebody would think that their political situation and their political interest is somehow more important than the livelihood and health of 800,000 people that they were elected to lead,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a briefing Thursday.
Scott declined to say on Friday when he plans to file the lawsuit.
Bush, who struck the deal for the hospital funds when his brother George W. Bush was president, is responsible for privatizing Florida’s current Medicaid program.
“Expanding Medicaid without reforming it is not going to solve our problems over the long run,” Bush told reporters in New Hampshire on Thursday. “We need to reform Medicaid. And there’s a plan to do that in Florida that’s pretty good.”