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More than 650 thousand Floridians receiving Medicaid in Florida are being told that after November first,  they can only use big chain pharmacies to have prescriptions filled. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the policy of two providers has locally owned drug stores crying foul.

Massy Pharmacy is a locally owned business in Quincy Florida…25 miles west of the state Capitol. It’s a favorite for locals like retired mosquito control director Michael Dunn.

“I’ve been going here just about all of my…just about since I was born just about, and I know the people that own it” Dunn told us.

But locally owned stores accross Florida are feeling pressure from the HMO’s managing the states Medicaid program. Two companies, Molina and Humana account for almost one in five of nearly Medicaid patients, and they are limiting prescription refills to big chains, not small stores like this one. Michael Jackson is the CEO of theFlorida Pharmacy Assn.

“You have a policy statement that says a patient can go over here, but can’t go over there” says Jackson.

The Pharmacy Association is complaining loudly.

“They are being told that their taxes and fees you pay to help fund the Medicaid program to care for the indigent are good enough to take care of that program but your services are not good enough, and we have a problem with that” says the CEO.

Massey’s was founded 80 years ago by Terrance Massey’s grandfather.

“If one company gets by doing this, then other companies are going to follow suit. It’s just a matter of time before its going to happen” says Terrance.

State law allows managed plans to control their networks based on three factors: Price, quality and credentials.  But pharmacists say they are only focusing on price.

The mom and pop’s say they can compete, but they’re not even being given the change.

“You know, jobs will be lost, and we’re local” says Massey.

Ultimately, lawmakers may have the final say if other HMO’s begin limiting competition.

The Florida Pharmacy Association met with the Agency for Health Care Administration, Previously the ACHA has responded to complaints by saying it can only take action if the HMO’s don’t have a pharmacy within 20 miles in a big city or sixty in a rural area.

Nearly half a million Floridians have a state-run Citizens property insurance policy, the so called “insurer of last resort.” As Matt Galka tells us, Floridians who are sticking with citizens could be paying more next year.

A rate hike for Citizens customers? Policy holder Joe Walsh from Monroe County told state regulators ‘no way’ Thursday. A proposed rate hike from the state run insurer would hit policy holders in the county with a nearly 9 percent increase.

“This isn’t a rich person’s issue, this is a regular guy’s issue. Teachers and firefighters and real estate brokers and police officers, those are the people that are most directly affected by this 8.9% increase,” said Walsh.

Most policy holders could be hit with a nearly 6.8 percent, but it varies.

“We must charge actuarially sound rates and those actuarially sound rates are going to be increasing substantially,” said Citizens’ President Barry Gilway.

Whether or not the rate hikes get approved is up to the office of insurance regulation.

“It’s certainly very troubling to hear that folks that are residents in Monroe County and really in any county in the state are having to consider moving out of their homes and making other accommodations in order to afford housing because of insurance rates,” said Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier.

Citizens customers have the right to shop around for another insurer, but only a little more than 47,000 customers have left this year.

Public comment on the rate hike is still being taken until September 1st. If you want to sound off about it, you can email comments to ratehearings@floir.com.

New legislation licensing public guardians, the people who care for someone when their families can’t, are coming under strict new scrutiny after years of complaints of abuse. As Mike Vasilinda tells us,  the new protections are the result of dozens of families pushing back against the system.

We’ve followed the saga of Doug Franks and his mother Earnestine for the last two and a half years.  Earnestine still lives in her Pensacola home, but when Doug and his Brother disagreed on her care. A public guardian was appointed. Doug says it has been an irreversible nightmare ever since.

“My mother always says, Can you spend the night? for the last four years, she’s been saying that, spend the night, we got plenty of rooms. But I can’t tell her, mom, I’ll be put in jail if I do that. I can’t I’m sorry” says her son.

We’ve watched Doug testify before legislative committees, where this year and last he helped push through new licensing requirements for guardians.

This week Doug and other victims of Guardian Abuse testified before the panel making rules for the new law. Alan Sayler of St. Petersburg made the trip with his wife, whose mother is under the care of a guardian.

“If they violate these new rules, then they can be disciplined, which can also include the revocation of their license and they’ll no longer be able to work as guardians” says Sayler.

There are hundreds of similar stories across Florida.

Many accuse judges of being unsympathetic, and going so far as appointing their friends as guardians in lucrative cases. Kathleen Zargaros of Tampa says judges have been no help in her case.

“So this will take it from them, so we can go somewhere and say this is what we are giving you. This person has broken all of your rules and they should be revoked. Then they will investigate it, where before, all we had were the courts.”

“And they wouldn’t do anything?”

“Nothing. They never do” says Zargaros.

The new legislation is the first effort to monitor and regulate guardians at any level of government. And those like Doug who say they’ve been abused by the system are seeing their first ray of hope.

The Department of Elder Affairs is accepting written comments on the new rules for the next week. The new legislation, which includes the ability to file complaints is expected to be up and running October first.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission has 825 thousand dollars this year to help local governments and residents bear proof their neighborhoods. Today, FWC signed an agreement with Waste Pro to provide bear resistant trash container in the panhandle. FWC Chairman Brian Yablonski says Floridians need to be more involved in bear proofing their property.

“You know, the states out in the western part of America have been doing this for years. It’s part of their culture. It now needs to become part of the culture of Florida” says the FWC Chairman.

Just over six thousand nuisance bears were reported to FWC last year. 15 mostly rural counties account for the majority of complaints.

A Sumpter County man was arrested after shooting an alligator who he says threatened his horses. Social media has exploded after the incident, with many asking why he could not have used Stand Your Ground, but it does not apply to animals. FWC Public InformationCoordinator Rob Klepper says people should call the FWC hotline with gator complaints.

“Let us know and we’ll send a trapper out as soon as we can to take care of that gator. Now, of course, we can’t tell people not to protect their life and property, but every case is going to be different and we really want to encourage people to call that hotline” says Klepper.

The Hot line number is 866-FWC- Gator or 866-392-4286.

Public school teachers were dealt another blow in their fight against school choice. As Matt Galka tells us, the latest court ruling siding with state tax credit scholarships gives the state’s largest teacher’s union one more option – Florida’s Supreme Court.

They rallied and they put a full on ad blitz on tv, and now the 1^st District Court of Appeals has sided with school choice advocates and stopped the lawsuit against Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for now.

Ron Meyer represents the Florida Education Association and says they still believe public schools are being harmed with less funding despite the ruling.

“We don’t agree that there is no special injury when, as we said in the complaint of this lawsuit, hundreds of millions of dollars are being taken from the public fisk, with student leaving the public schools to go to these unregulated voucher schools,” he said.

The FEA has said in the past they’d be willing to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

“We are reviewing to see if the Supreme Court should have the final say,” said Meyer.

But school choice advocate and Tallahassee pastor R.B. Holmes says he hopes it doesn’t go that far. He argues that more than 90,000 students would have been out of luck had the ruling gone the other way.

“School started this week, and you’ve got close to 100,000 students that are using these scholarships, that would be a travesty,” he said.

Advocates say the program mostly helps minority low income families who’s children were being failed by public schools. The tax credit scholarship program is expected to cost just under $560 million dollars this year.

Elections can get feisty and downright nasty…and 2016’s unique election cycle is no different. As Matt Galka tells us, the GOP’s presidential nominee says if he loses, the election must’ve been rigged, but voting officials here in Florida say not so fast.

A rigged election? That’s what one candidate is suggesting. But it’s not likely to happen here in Florida. After all, we are talking about the state with a storied history of election messes and fixes. Does Bush-Gore in 2000 ring a bell?

Florida’s Supervisors of Elections Association put out a statement last week casting doubt on the rigged election talk.

Ron Labasky is the counsel for the association. When you ask him about a fixed election in November…

“I think that it would be virtually impossible,” he said.

He says safeguards put in place nearly a decade ago help to deter fraud.

“The fact that we have a paper ballot obviously ensures that if there were any question about a vote not being properly tabulated or the count being incorrect, you can go back and compare those individual pieces of paper rather than relying on some computer generated result,” he said.

Bottom line: the message from the county elections officials to the more than 12 million registered voters in the state – we won’t screw this up.

The Florida Supreme Court declared the states scheme for handling injured workers unconstitutional in three cases earlier this year (One of them involving the City of St. Petersburg). The result, as Mike Vasilinda tells us, is a potential twenty percent increase in Workers Comp insurance for Florida businesses.

In 2003, Florida has some of the highest rates for the insurance business buy to protect injured workers. Changes that year cut the cost by 60 percent. But in three cases earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court found the savings came at the expense of injured workers.

Lori Lovgren from the Natl. Council on Compensation Insurance told the panel “It found unconstitutional 4.40 related to attorney’s fees.”

The court also struck down a system that allowed 104 weeks of income after an injury and reinstated the 260 weeks in the law before the 2003 change.

A hearing on what to do next brought out every major industry in the state. Most say the ruling hurts business. Mark Wilson is the President of the Florida Chamber.

“It advantages trial lawyers and disadvantages injured workers:”

A state sanctioned, industry run commission is recommending a 19.6 percent increase.

“We’re here today because the law says rates can’t be inadequate” says Lovgren.

But Dr. Michael Helvacian, an expert hired by a pro business anti lawyer group says the rates need to increase at least 35 percent to be legal, but if they do, consequences will be dire.

“The demand for employees will be dampened because the costs, employers cost of doing business will be higher” says Helvacian.

The higher the rate hike after this courts ruling, the more likely big business can force the legislature to do something.

Many on both sides believe the rate hike is the beginning of what will be the biggest issue for lawmakers next spring. Rich Templin of the Florida AFL-CIO says the union just wants fair legislation.

“What we want is for the system to provide medical care and decent benefits for workers at the time of their injury when this happens.

The council is recommending higher rates for everyone as early as October.

One expert says the higher rates will slow job creation by one hundred six thousand each year. The decision is the first major rate case that will be made by the state’s new Insurance Commissioner.

Thousands of state lawmakers and staff at a national conference in Chicago on issues facing states got an earful on the security of the electric grid, , and as Mike Vasilinda tells us, utilities admit they know less about the issue than they should.

The bright lights of big cities would be dimmed, along with the lights in your home for weeks or even months as a result of cyber attacks or an act of war. The utilities, speaking to lawmakers, say they are fighting off attacks every day. Devon Streit runs the Arkansas Electrical Coop.

“And they only have to be right once. We have to be right every single time” Streit told lawmakers on behalf of the industry.

Electrical providers say an outage is more likely to last weeks than months if a major attack succeeds, but they admit they don’t know as much as they should, which is why they are funding extended research on EMP and cyber attacks.

“Electro-magnetic waves are fluky things. No odosne really understands how they work, and I’m an electrical engineer, and I’ll just tell you that right now” quipped Streit.

A  2013 attack on a substation in California got the utilities attention. Street says they now have a list of the most vulnerable sites in America. “Now that’s a confidential list, so I’m not going to tell you which ones they are” he said.

But former news anchor turned author Ted Koppel told the audience the attacks are much more likely and devastating than the utilities admit and no one is ready for the worst case scenario.

“This isn’t Ted Koppel saying it, this is Ted Koppel quoting the former head of the national security agency” says the Author.

South Florida lawmaker Richard Stark (D_Broward) called the session eye opening.

“Instead o being pro-active and planning, we tend to wait until there is a disaster” says Stark.

Koppel and others say a lengthy grid outage would strain food and fuel supplies as well as everything else that we take for granted.

Russia, China and the US all have the capabilities to take out the other’s grids, but not the will. But defense experts say North Korea or ISIL may lack the capability but not the will, and may someday have the capability to cause major electrical outages.

With 15 days to go until the August primary, early voting has started in parts of the state. As Matt Galka tells us, casting a ballot early could help in a record setting year.

It wasn’t a packed house in Quincy, Florida – about 30 minutes away from the state capitol – for early voting. But Mike Allen made it a point to cast his ballot.

“I work, and I wanted to vote on my off day early,” he said.

Allen says it’s important to make your voice heard even if the August election isn’t the big one.

“It’s very important because you have all your amendments, and you have to know as taxpayers how they’re using your money, and you want somebody in there who’s not going to let the money get wasted,” he said.

And early voting could play a pivitol role this year with a record number of registered voters in Florida heading into the August primary. More than twelve million people are eligible to vote in the primary election

Leon County and many others won’t open up early voting until Saturday. State law requires at least 8 days of early ballot casting from August 20-27.

“What early voting does is redistribute turnout.  So as long as the election is below 65% we can handle early voting with the hours of 8 days, however, once you go over that number and you’re approaching 75, 80, or even higher you need the additional days for early voting,” said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.

Counties were also given the option to add six more days of early voting…with four out of the five most populated counties opting for the additional time.

More than 592 thousand Floridians have already voted by mail with more than 1.6 million ballots not yet returned.

It might be hard to believe, but there’s just 87 days until the presidential election. As Matt Galka tells us Florida is always a top prize for candidates – and right now it’s neck and neck.

The biggest battleground state in the country is a virtual tie between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump according to a  Quinnipiac Poll released earlier this week. An NBC/Marist poll released Friday has the Democratic nominee with a 44-39 advantage. Democratic strategist Steve Schale says it’s nothing new, but people shouldn’t get caught up in the numbers yet.

“Let’s keep in mind that the last four elections we’ve had an election that was 0 points, four points, three points, and one point. So Florida, by nature, is a very close race, and I think it’s a close race. Clinton has some advantages with demographics but if she won by two or three points it would be a landslide,” he said.

Trump criticized Clinton at a packed rally in Kissimmee, Florida Thursday, and more attacks are expected in the lead up to the general election.

Democrat leaning Progress Florida launched a website this week asking Floridians who have been fleeced by Trump businesses to share their stories.

“I think the voters deserve to know as much as they can about Donald Trump’s rhetoric,” said Damien Filer with the group.

And so far, the Clinton camp has been peppering the state with ads while Trump has mostly remained on the sidelines.

The President’s pick for the United States Supreme Court has so far been stonewalled by the U.S. Senate, but as Matt Galka tells us, the problem doesn’t stop in the country’s highest court…Florida has a federal judge problem, too.

Four judicial vacancies have created emergency situations in the central and southern parts of the state according to a new report from government watchdog Integrity Florida.

“Potential impacts include case delays, less time spent on cases because of higher case loads, increased administrative burdens, and increased risk of judicial burnout,” said Executive Director Ben Wilcox.

And even though many of us may not find ourselves in front of a federal judge, their impact can reach everyone.

“Well they’re extremely important, three cases in the last year and a half or two illustrate that. There was Planned Parenthood abortion decision, there was a redistricting decision, and the same sex marriage decision. All of those have sweeping impacts on the people of Florida,” said Alan Stonecipher who helped author the report.

So what do federal judges and emergency rooms have to do with each other? The writers of the report say that when either are short staffed, people can suffer.

“You can liken it to an emergency room, you have all sorts of business in there and you can run as fast as you can and give decent care to everyone, but at some point it breaks down, and you’re not able to give the best quality care to a patient, it’s similar to that for judgeships,” said Stonecipher.

The U.S. Senate has yet to act on the nominations for the vacant positions. And there are more vacancies on the way.

Three nominations were made this past April and one was made in February of last year for the vacant positions.  The report says that when cases are delayed due to vacancies, the cost gets passed on to the taxpayers.

Fantasy sports leagues are a 150 billion dollar a year industry nationwide, and as Mike Vasilinda tells us, Florida lawmakers at a national conference in Chicago are getting an earful from the industry.

Fans in Chicago can cheer on teams in every major professional sports league, but like Florida, betting on fantasy teams remains a murky part of state law.

The lack of regulation,especially for daily contests is a hot topic nationally. The industry was giving lawmakers a full court press here in the Windy City,

Sot: Jeremy Kudon

Fan-duel Lobbyist

“We don’t want to kill it before it has a chance to thrive” said Jeremy Kudon, a lobbyist for Fan Duel.

Hoping they will clear up the murky status of fantasy games.

Sot: Steve Brubaker

The Small Businesses of Fantasy Sports

“We’ll come talk to you about how that language should be structured” offered Steve Brusker, a lobbyist for smaller operators.

And when it came to money.

“You should feel free not to have a tax at all” Kudon told the crowd, only half jokingly.

Legislation to regulate fantasy sports died in Florida earlier this year.

Florida’s legislation would have required an up front, half million dollar registration fee, followed by an annual hundred thousand dollar renewal.

Florida’s failed proposal would have allowed wagering on amateur contests, and that’s a problem for many at the conference. Maureen Riehl from Multi States Associates advocated for prohibitions on amateur sports betting.

“Let the kids play the games they love without any undue influence. And because  we consider this is similar to other kinds of sports betting, we really want to make sure the kids are protected.”

Broward State Representative Richard Stark was a bit taken back by the hard push from the industry.

“Nation wide its rally the same questions we are dealing with in Florida. Is a special category of gaming different than everything else we have? Is it gaming or not gaming?” asked Stark.

But for now, the fantasy games are unregulated in Florida. Bottom line…bettor beware.

Only one of the nine states to legalize fantasy sports, Virginia,  does not prohibit betting on amateur games.

A dozen or so Florida lawmakers are in Chicago this week for a national conference discussing challenges facing the states. St. Petersburg State Senator Jeff Brandes is participating on a panel discussing the future of autonomous vehicles. Ironically, earlier this week, vehicle makers had to cancel a planned demonstration because the laws in Illinois don’t allow the self driving cars. Brandes told  the panel that Florida lisin the drivers seat when it comes to being self driving friendly.

“This is going to transform public transportation mobility as we know it in a way that we haven’t seen since the transformation from the horse and buggy to the Model T. this is our generations transformation. I think even more so than a smart phone. I know that that is probably a pretty bold statement, but I think you are going to see a public transportation transformation that occurs in our cities and communities in a way that is much more profound than a smart phone has made our individual lives” says Brandes.

Summer’s over for thousands of kids across the state starting today. As Matt Galka tells us, starting this year Labor Day is no longer dictating when school is back in session.

Students in Hillsborough County said goodbye to summer break and headed off to school Wednesday.

Kids in St. John’s County grabbed their book bags and pencils and headed off to class Wednesday, too.

This was the first year that school start dates weren’t tethered to the Labor Day Holiday. A change in state law meant that Wednesday was the first day districts could start the year, they previously had to wait until two weeks before Labor Day.

Not every kid was back in school, 40 districts opted for August 10^th, with a majority of others waiting until Monday August 15^th.

Ruth Melton with the Florida School Boards Association said that August tourism had been a concern when they pitched an earlier school start date. But they wanted students to be able to finish the first semester before Winter Break.

“With a later school start date that became impossible, so over the course of several years, most of the education related community pushed hard to try and give us a little flexibility so that school could start late enough in the summer so students could complete their school year, but early enough that students could have a nice summer break before coming back to begin the grind,” she said.

Had the old law still been in place…schools wouldn’t have been able to start until August 22^nd this year, because Labor Day falls on September 5^th.

Of course an earlier start means an earlier end.  All school districts are scheduled to wrap up classes by the end of the first week of June, with many ending in late May.