Families, hospitals fighting Medicaid cuts

CHRIS URSO/STAFF

Lakeesha Hines kisses her son Braelyn after his physical therapy at United Cerebral Palsy of Tampa Bay. His family depends on assistance from Medicaid to pay for his ongoing treatment for stroke-related seizures, asthma and developmental delays.

CHRIS URSO/STAFF

Occupational therapist Rod Douglas works with Braelyn Hines at United Cerebral Palsy of Tampa Bay. His family depends on assistance from Medicaid to pay for his ongoing treatment for stroke-related seizures, asthma and developmental delays.

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By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 20, 2012

TAMPA - Braelyn Hines gets a common cold, and his family rushes off to the St. Joseph Children's Hospital emergency room.

Home remedies or waiting to see the family doc aren't an option for the 7-year-old Brandon boy, who will forever live with a multitude of maladies. Nothing concerning his health is easy, or inexpensive, says his mother.

"He really is a complex case, where he's not able to go to a walk-in clinic," said Lakeesha Hines, who depends on assistance from Medicaid to pay for her son's ongoing treatment for stroke-related seizures, asthma and developmental delays.

Braelyn's family is part of an organized effort to prevent proposed cuts to the state's reimbursement for hospitals that treat poor children, the elderly and disabled. Over the next few weeks, House and Senate leaders will finalize a state budget that could reduce hospital Medicaid cuts between $376 million and $620 million.

The Heal Florida Health Care Coalition hopes stories like Braelyn's convince legislators to stop already excessive health care cuts, said Bruce Rueben, president of the Florida Hospital Association. Hospitals will continue to care for their patients. The cuts will just shift the burden, he said.

"This is a situation where the poor will still be in the hospital and the money will still be spent," he said. "It just means there will be more unmet costs. Hospitals will have to make it up through people who can pay."

St. Joseph's, where Braelyn gets most of his care, stands to lose between $9.4 and $19 million next year. That's second only to Tampa General Hospital in Hillsborough and Pasco counties, which faces total losses of $35.5 million to $65.1 million at the area's 19 hospitals.

Hines, her husband and two other sons have private health insurance, but Braelyn's not eligible, she said. There's no way they can afford care that includes therapy four days a week, and roughly two unexpected hospital stays a year.

She's most worried cuts will push some of Braelyn's doctors out of Florida, for fear they won't get paid. The relationship he has with doctors, nurses and services is vital for the boy who can't speak and learned to walk only last year.

"We cannot afford to lose the quality professionals we now have," Hines said.

An estimated 3 million Floridians are on Medicaid, the federal health insurance for poor children, families, pregnant women and the disabled. The state depends on complicated calculations and local, state and federal funds to determine how much it distributes for patient care.

An expected $1 billion to $2 billion drop in revenue in 2012 has triggered severe cuts to health care and nearly every agency covered by the state budget. This year, the House plan proposes reducing the Medicaid reimbursements $376 million. The Senate plan, passed last week, would eliminate $620 million.

Health care is a significant portion of the state budget. Large cuts are unavoidable to create a balanced budget, said Rep. Dana Young, R-Tampa.

"The budget before you meets our responsibility to provide health care services to Florida's most vulnerable while also living within our means and keeping our taxes low,'' Young told the News Service of Florida.

Rueben acknowledges the need to reduce the size of the state budget, but hospitals already have seen $966 million in Medicaid cuts since 2005. Services will be cut, jobs will be lost and Floridians will have less access to health care, he said.

"The impact would be magnified because we're still dealing with the impact of $500 million in cuts last year," he said.

The cuts also directly affect federal matching money, Rueben said. That's a dangerous proposition as the nation creeps toward 2014, when the national Affordable Care Act is expected to increase the number of people eligible for Medicaid.

"We have to have the program as strong as possible as we go into it," he said.

Hines can't think about those bureaucratic issues. To her, the millions and billions of dollars politicians fight over is really about her baby boy. Her family shouldn't be blamed for trying to keep Braelyn healthy, she said.

"At the end of the day, I need my child to be taken care of," she said. "It's not our fault, or their fault what happened to these children."

mshedden@tampatrib.com (813) 259-7365

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Families, hospitals fighting Medicaid cuts