Florida children on Medicaid deserve doctors who can afford to see them. Right now, Pediatric Associates — the largest pediatric Medicaid provider in our state — is suing the state for $300 million it says was wrongly withheld over nearly two years. That's not a rounding error. That's money that should have been keeping clinic doors open, nurses employed, and sick kids getting care. When the Agency for Health Care Administration uses flawed math to set what doctors get paid, real families feel the consequences — longer wait times, fewer providers accepting Medicaid, and children falling through the cracks.
This isn't about a lawsuit. It's about whether Florida is a place where pediatricians can survive serving our most vulnerable kids. If the state's own payment calculations were wrong, we should fix them — fast. Every month this drags on, providers are absorbing losses they can't sustain, and some will stop taking Medicaid patients altogether. We cannot afford to drive children's doctors out of the Medicaid system. Once they leave, they don't come back.
I'm asking you to call on the Agency for Health Care Administration to immediately audit and correct its pediatric Medicaid reimbursement rates and release the funds owed to providers who have already delivered that care. Florida's children — and the doctors who treat them — cannot wait for this to work its way through the courts.
