Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville's shameful neglect of legal aid, and the 'slow hurricane' it's hastening
A little over one year ago, and just weeks before COVID-19 gripped worldwide attention, two Florida state agencies agreed to a remarkable, consequential but barely noticed settlement to a class-action lawsuit that had accused them of illegally kicking eligible people off the state’s Medicaid coverage.
That settlement, enforced by a Jacksonville-based federal judge, included a requirement that the Florida Department of Children and Families and Florida Agency for Health Care Administration go back and review more than 71,000 cases across the state in which the agencies booted people, some of whom have severe disabilities or illness, out of their health care coverage without adequate notice or without a proper eligibility review conducted by state officials.
It resulted in the state placing more than 32,000 people back on Medicaid, and another 11,600 on a similar program called Medically Needy, according to attorneys who handled the case on behalf of the named plaintiffs, which included a former foster child with significant health issues living in Jacksonville. State officials thought the young man had aged out of one kind of Medicaid eligibility, but he still qualified under different criteria — something the state should have reviewed but didn't. There were many thousands more like him.