Florida Rejecting Millions in PPACA Money — Where’s South Dakota’s Bucket?

During the 2010 campaign, Kristi Noem squared her soapbox scorn for the 2009 federal stimulus with her eager votes to save South Dakota's budget with the stimulus by saying that if she and her Legislative colleagues hadn't voted to take the money, someone else would have gotten it.

That thinking isn't stopping Florida Governor Rick Scott from rejecting federal assistance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

Despite having the country's fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, the state has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.

In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott's administration or the state's Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.

While 36 states shared $27 million to counsel health insurance consumers, Florida did not apply for the grants. And in drafting this year's budget, the Legislature failed to authorize an $8.3 million federal grant won by a county health department to expand community health centers [Kevin Sack, "Opposing the Health Law, Florida Refuses Millions," New York Times, 2011.07.31].

Hmmm... Florida apparently doesn't mind if someone else spends those federal dollars. So if Florida isn't going to eat that slice of federal pie, wouldn't good Noem logic say South Dakota ought to apply for it?