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Medicaid costs the state of Florida 20 billion dollars a year; that’s nearly a third of the state budget. Incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos is on a mission to bring those costs down. Haridopolos is touring the state, talking to doctors, administrators and today some students at FSU Med School in hopes of building support and gaining ideas to help solve the problem. Haridopolos says strict bureaucratic guidelines are keeping costs high.

“Right now doctors feel constrained, hospitals feel constrained by the one size fits all scenarios and with the additions of 1.4 million Floridians going on Medicaid because of what they did in Washington DC is making things more difficult,” said Haridopolos.

Nurse Practitioner Mai Kung has a few ideas to bring down the cost. Kung is asking state lawmakers to allow nurse practitioners to write prescriptions for controlled drugs, so patients don’t have to waste more time and money waiting for a doctor to do what the nurse practitioner tells them.

“Studies have show repeatedly that we can provide high quality cost effective patient centered care at a much reduced cost and we can practice to our full scope of practice and we can save Medicaid cost,” said Kung.

Florida and Alabama are the only states that don’t allow nurse practitioners to write prescriptions for controlled substances. Legislation allowing the 15-thousand Florida NPs to write the prescriptions has died 15 years in a row. If passed it’s estimated to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars.