The legislative session is only a few weeks old in Florida, but leaders in the state are already at odds over how to deal with the state's estimated $2 billion budget shortfall. Most officials, including the Governor and legislative leaders from both parties, are intent on a steep increase in K-12 education funding. Differences arise over how to pay for the spending hike, if at all. 

Governor Rick Scott has proposed raising K-12 education funding by $1 billion, after last year's budget cut funding by $1.35 billion. Of that total, different portions would be dedicated to replacing one-time revenues, offsetting losses from expected property tax revenue decrease, and adding funding for the 30,000 new students expected to enroll in Florida schools this year. 

Some stakeholders, like Florida Education Association President Andy Ford, argue that the $1 billion increase does not go far enough. Still, the extra money would double the amount spent on reading programs for each student, and increase overall funding per pupil by $141.64 according to the Governor's office. 

To pay for the extra spending, Scott crafted a plan to save the state nearly $2 billion in Medicaid payments, an area in which state funding has nearly doubled since 2002. Under the current system, hospitals are reimbursed at individual rates based on costs to the particular hospital. The hospital executive-turned-Governor's plan would group the state's hospitals into ten different categories, like teaching or children's. Reimbursement rates for the different categories would then be leveled within each category based on average costs. 

The Medicaid proposal has been met with little fanfare. House Speaker Dean Cannon recently released his budget allocations, indicating how much money the House hopes to spend in each area of government. Those allocations did not make room for the Governor's Medicaid plan, despite Cannon's similar hopes of increasing education funding by $1 billion. Other Republicans, like the chair of the House subcommittee on health spending Rep. Matt Hudson, decried the Governor's plans as "draconian" and flatly ruled out any reduction in Medicaid reimbursements. 

Cannon and some Senate leaders, though, have hinted that another type of Medicaid reform may be on the table. They have indicated a willingness to consider reforming Medicaid payments into a "diagnosis related group" (DRG) system. In this system, very similar to the one used by the Federal Medicare program, reimbursement rates are delivered based on a patients' diagnosis. 

Overall, early discussions like these give an idea of the issues that Governor Scott and the Florida legislature plan on tackling in this year's session. Whether or not they find a way to improve the state's public education system while simultaneously slowing the explosion in Medicaid spending remains to be seen.