MM Curator summary
A Florida county is developing a new type of property tax to get enhanced federal funding for Medicaid services.
The article below has been highlighted and summarized by our research team. It is provided here for member convenience as part of our Curator service.
County commissioners Tuesday voted 3-2 to levy a non-ad valorem special assessment for enhanced Medicaid payments for local services.
County commissioners Tuesday voted 3-2 to levy a non-ad valorem special assessment for enhanced Medicaid payments for local services.
Except for indirect benefits, the move means little to Citrus County residents. But it does allow Citrus Memorial Hospital and Bayfront Health Seven Rivers to draw in more federal money to increase their Medicaid revenues.
Commissioners Ron Kitchen Jr. and Scott Carnahan voted against the measure.
Get more from the Citrus County Chronicle
Citrus Memorial and Bayfront Health provide millions of dollars of uncompensated care to Medicaid patients. That’s because Medicaid typically only covers 60% of the costs for health care services provided by the hospitals.
That leaves CMH and Bayfront Health with substantial uncompensated costs, sometimes called the Medicaid shortfall, or gap.
The two local hospitals combined in 2020 pulled in $316 million in Medicaid revenues.
This does not cost Citrus County taxpayers more. What it does do is ensure that the county’s two hospitals are financially healthier and — down the road — it could benefit residents by seeing improvements to their buildings and services.
Kitchen said this only fattens the pocketbooks of the hospitals and wanted to follow the advice of their own attorneys and staff who recommended denial of the assessment over indemnification concerns.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Medicaid enrollment has increased from 3.8 million to 4.6 million, and Medicaid enrollment is expected to increase, according to Florida TaxWatch, a Tallahassee nonprofit taxpayer research institute
“As more enrollees seek additional care, the cost to administer and deliver medical services to Medicaid beneficiaries throughout the state will increase,” said TaxWatch. “By fiscal year 2021-22, Medicaid expenditures are expected to increase to $32.6 billion with the state’s share of costs increasing by nearly $2 billion and the federal share of costs decreasing by around $1 billion.”