Medicaid is a program that provides health insurance coverage to people who are low-income. In Florida, the Medicaid program is administered by the Agency for Health Care Administration. A warning about Medicaid fraud, in bright red text, appears at the top of the website where people apply for Medicaid benefits.
Medicaid is a public, or government run, form of health insurance. It is designed to provide health insurance coverage for individuals and families who are low-income and who cannot afford to buy health insurance from a private insurance company. Medicaid is funded by the federal government. It is also funded by the government of an individual state.
Florida was in the news in May for making it extremely difficult for people to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. The state doesn’t make it easy for people to get Medicaid benefits, either. To apply for Medicaid, people must go to the Florida Department of Children and Families. The Medicaid program is also administered by the Agency for Health Care Administration.
The Department of Children and Families (DCF) determines if a person or family is eligible for Medicaid. They decide this for the following groups: low-income families who have children, children (but not their families), pregnant women, “non-citizens with medical emergencies”, and “aged and/or disabled individuals not currently receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI)”.
The first thing that a person will see when he or she goes to apply for Medicaid is a bunch of bright red text. It is a “Public Assistance Fraud Warning”. This describes exactly what will happen to people who provide inaccurate information to the DCF. Some of the wording includes:
“You may be accused of a crime if you provide false answers, or if you do not provide complete and accurate information for the purpose of getting benefits. This may result in fines of up to $250,000, a prison term, or both, if you are convicted of public assistance fraud. In addition you will not be able to get benefits for 12 months after the first time, 24 months after the second time, and permanently the third time that you provide false or inaccurate information.”
That doesn’t sound very friendly! To me, it seems as though the main purpose of this threatening red text is to dissuade people from attempting to apply for Medicaid. It makes people very fearful of accidentally making a mistake on a form.
Perhaps this is the state of Florida’s way of keeping the cost of their Medicaid program low – by frightening people who are eligible away from applying for it! There is nowhere on that website, or any of the other Florida Medicaid websites, that lists the eligibility requirements.
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