Reply #10: In the meantime, Rubio slips in stealth language to benefit a crony in a major Turnpike contract. [View All]

[seafan]

Rubio's budget wording benefits ally

BY MARC CAPUTO
April 7, 2008

TALLAHASSEE --
Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio quietly slipped tough-to-spot language in a state budget plan last week that helps a friend and political money-man bid on a major fuel contract in a $265 million turnpike overhaul proposal.

This is the second year in a row that South Florida fuel distributor Max Alvarez has relied on the man he has said is ''like a son'' to push the budget language to ensure he can more easily bid for the job.

Rubio said in a written statement that he was concerned the turnpike contract paved the way for anti-competitive "monopolies," and acknowledged through spokeswoman Jill Chamberlin that his office ''had a role'' in putting the language in the budget, adding that ``others are interested in it as well.''

Republican lawmakers and staffers, including Rubio allies, told The Miami Herald that the speaker was the one who inserted the language in the budget. Chamberlin said she wasn't told.

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But Rubio's not done yet.


He's again pushing to privatize Medicaid, just like Jeb wanted.


House pushes Medicaid experiment for nine additional counties

By DAVID ROYSE
April 09, 2008

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The House decided Wednesday to push forward with a plan to expand a change in the way Medicaid works, though local trials of the overhaul have been criticized for glitches.

Pushed hard by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, the Legislature a few years ago moved to revamp the Medicaid system that delivers health care to about 2.2 million Floridians. The plan would make Medicaid more like private health care, putting patients into care networks like health maintenance organizations. Supporters said that would boost preventive care and limit cost increases. Currently, most people in Medicaid simply seek care, and then afterward the government is billed for it.

The plan to reform Medicaid was criticized by many advocates for the poor who said it would leave some people unable to find the care they need. Critics have said some Medicaid recipients have had trouble in choosing a plan that would cover their needs, and that it wasn't apparent that care was better under the new system, or cheaper, which were the goals.
In a compromise, the Legislature started the change slowly. It is being tried in five counties in a pilot program - but has been expected to eventually become the statewide norm.

Last year, there were some acknowledgements from unexpected sources that the overhaul wasn't going as smoothly as hoped. The inspector general at the state agency that runs Medicaid, the Agency for Health Care Administration, even said there were problems. The agency said it wouldn't ask lawmakers to move forward with expanding the program this year.

The agency, however, recently got a new secretary, Holly Benson, who supports expanding the Medicaid overhaul more quickly.

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And two weeks ago, Rubio pushed through the House version of the "Take Your Gun To Work" bill.

Just what an employer needs to remember, when he must lay off an employee on a Friday.




And Rubio and Jeb also stacked the obscure Taxation and Budget Reform Commission with Republican operatives, who are busy pushing Jeb's pet school vouchers into our state constitution, steering public money into religious organizations and forcing tax caps on local governments' ability to collect revenue for needed local expenses.



What Jeb Bush Republicans have done to Florida is pure and deliberate devastation.