FLASideDish….

Broward County is “the largest of five counties participating in a 2006 pilot program implemented under former Gov. Jeb Bush that puts Medicaid recipients into privately managed care. Gov. Rick Scott and Republican lawmakers want to expand the program statewide during the upcoming legislative session, which begins March 8.” …

“Let me tell you a doctor’s perspective on Medicaid – we don’t participate. It’s that simple,” said Dr. Miguel Machado, a St. Augustine neurosurgeon and head of the Florida Medical Association.

Doctors also complain the Medicaid HMOs refuse the tests and medicine they prescribe. Broward County obstetrician Dr. Aaron Elkin can no longer see pregnant Medicaid patients in the critical first trimester because private providers won’t pay for it. If a patient has a suspicious breast lump, he said, timely mammograms and biopsies are impossible. Critics say the state is jeopardizing the care of poor and disabled patients to line the pockets of for-profit insurance companies, especially because there’s been little data evaluating the pilot program five years later. That data showed a small decrease in expenditures, but it was unclear if that was because patients got less care or it was delivered more efficiently. (FLAPolitics)

Some Democrats were aghast at Republican Allen West’s references to bayonets during his successful 2010 congressional campaign. West (as at this West Palm Beach tea party rally) was invoking Union Col. Joshua Chamberlain, who helped change the course of the Civil War at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. Another Chamberlain fan, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel of New York, was in Palm Beach last week recruiting potential West challengers for 2012. (PostPolitics/Bennett)..

Before he was even sworn into office, Gov. Rick Scott abolished the state agency tasked with reducing substance abuse and canned Florida’s drug czar. Early this month, he stunned legislators and law enforcement when he proposed eliminating Florida’s much-anticipated prescription-drug database, which is touted as the best tool for combating the state’s drug epidemic. Scott’s actions confounded Floridians and drew sharp criticism from leaders across the nation who see Florida as a source state for prescription drugs. “The notion of canceling Florida’s [prescription-drug-monitoring program] is equal to firing firefighters while your house is ablaze,” U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote to Scott on Feb. 17. “It neither makes sense nor addresses an urgent crisis.” (OrlandoSentinel/Pavuk)..

Gov. Rick Scott attended a black-tie dinner with other governors at the White House, where President Obama acknowledged differences in perspective but urged common ground. “There’s extraordinary diversity among our states, and that’s a great strength,” Obama said. “That’s why our federal system is the laboratory for democracy, because in each of your states you guys are trying all kinds of things. And oftentimes your best ideas end up percolating up and becoming models and templates for the country. But we’re also one nation and our goal has to be to find ways to find common ground and to work together, and I’m confident that we can do that moving forward.” Scott is no fan of Obama’s policies, of course, but he and other critics put that aside for the fancy affair. Obama toasted the group and joked, “I know some of you may be confused and think this is the Oscars. There are some similarities. First of all, everybody looks spectacular. And the second is this: If I speak too long, the music will start playing.” The governors are in town for the National Governors Association meeting and plan to return to the White House on Monday for meetings. (St.PetersburgTimes/Leary)..

Florida senate president Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne. Senate President Mike Haridopolos is last to appear for the 7:15 a.m. meeting, the only one who brought coffee, his blond hair still wet from a rinse in his office shower. He claims a black leather chair at the head of a glass-topped table and moves right into the hour’s focus. Who’s ready to talk about Lyndon Johnson’s turbulent years in the U.S. Senate? The most powerful member in the Florida Senate, Haridopolos, 40, isn’t meeting with lobbyists, advisers, colleagues or reporters. Twice a week, just after security officers unlock the Capitol’s doors, he lectures University of Florida students from a conference room typically used for senators’ group policy meetings. The students are spending their spring semester in Tallahassee, interning across town and attending his class. The self-proclaimed academic oversees a one-hour undergraduate seminar, IDS 4930: Florida Politics. (St.PetersburgTimes/ Sanders)..

Eager to slash taxes and restrain government spending, Gov. Rick Scott and Republican budget-cutters in Congress are seeking to chop big chunks of state and federal funding for programs designed to preserve the natural environment. Government regulations to clean the air and water and prevent global warming are under attack. Even Everglades restoration, long a sacred cow for environmentalists and leaders of both political parties, may fall victim to the budget ax. A Republican spending bill passed by the U.S. House this month sets up a confrontation over environmental spending when the U.S. Senate takes up the legislation this week. And in Tallahassee, Scott’s austere budget, which would cut Everglades spending by nearly two-thirds, will be tested when the Legislature meets next month. Republicans in each capital called for sacrifice to prevent a yawning state budget gap and to ease the national debt. “We believe in Everglades restoration. But we are facing a serious financial emergency in this country,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in an interview last week. “There are a lot of worthy projects that are not going to get funded at the level they should be funded. And there are a lot of worthy projects that are not going to get funded at all.” (OrlandoSentinel/Gibson)..

Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature’s ruling Republicans have kicked over a political hornet’s nest by promoting budget cuts, pension overhauls and civil justice changes, which are now emerging as targets for statewide rallies by Democratic-allied organizations. The GOP’s tough medicine for a state pocked by foreclosures and almost 12 percent unemployment may be breathing life into a Florida Democratic Party, virtually left for dead after wholesale election defeats last fall. It also may effectively prove the opening round of the 2012 presidential contest in the nation’s biggest battleground state. “Democrats last fall were down and outspent,” said Susannah Randolph, campaign manager for defeated Orlando Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson and now an organizer of the March 8 rallies. “Now we’re seeing that we have to respond to a threat level like DEFCON 1,” said Randolph, who also is a leader of Florida Watch Action. “And sure, we want to keep this energy going.” Using a Facebook page, “Awake The State,” organizers are planning events in most major Florida cities on the legislature’s opening day. (PostPolitics/Keenedy)..