Florida Educators Object to Budget Increase at the Expense of Medicaid Healthcare Cuts

Budget cuts often make for unusual bedfellows, the State of Florida is discovering this week. In response to Governor Rick Scott's 2012 budget proposal that contains deep cuts in healthcare, two unions, one representing educators and the other representing healthcare workers, have bonded together to demand a closer look at the pending budget.

SEIU Local 1991 and the United Teachers of Dade arrived at the state capitol Tallahassee yesterday to lobby the governor's administration for permission to examine the cuts in funding for healthcare: to be precise, the governor hopes to trim $2 billion dollars in Medicaid spending from the budget, which would reduce funding for public hospitals, according to NBC Miami.

So why are the educators involved? One billion of the Medicaid budget cuts would be used to augment the state's school budgets, and educators are objecting to the cuts on their behalf, saying that the cuts should come from elsewhere to avoid a drop in healthcare services for the poor. The healthcare union, SEIU, has stated that the proposed cuts could mean a loss of as much as $130 million dollars at public hospitals such as Jackson Memorial, forcing it to cut the healthcare services that many of its low income patients need.

Miami-Dade teacher Antonio White told NBC Miami that he would rather see the increase in funding for schools sourced from somewhere that won't hurt the poor.

“Without proper funding, without proper avenues to help those underprivileged kids, we can't get to where we want to go,” said White.

So where should the additional funding come from? The two unions are throwing their support behind pending legislation called the “Fair Economy Act,” which would require large, Florida-based corporations to pay their accurate income tax while eliminating loopholes.

The two unions plan to lobby the governor in Tallahassee through today (Thursday).