Florida Senate Bill 82 - Impact to Solo Waiver Support Coordinators

I have read a few articles and have found that there is a little bit of confusion around what things mean and the wording being thrown around to describe the section of Florida Senate Bill 82 that talks about "qualified organization".

This paper says "requiring the Agency for Persons with Disabilities to competitively procure qualified organizations to provide support coordination services".

The main flaw in this is that there is not a way to even have this as part of the bill since it does not stipulate these restrictions NOT on the Support Coordination aspect. It says that the Agency's need to adhere to the states "competitive cost Initiatives" which is still not very accurate since Medicaid sets the rates that can be charged, and until then everyone will charge the same amount. An Agency cannot set a lower Rate because they rely on the "PROFIT" to pay their Employees. So setting a Lower rate while it might get them more consumers would be cost prohibitive because they would then have to lower the pay of the WSC and the system would collapse. 

This article https://www.news-press.com/story/news/newswire/2020/02/14/house-shies-away-overhauling-disabilities-program/4761396002/ states "The Senate proposal would require support coordinators, who help people with disabilities obtain services, to be employees of organizations. Currently they can be sole proprietors."

The main flaw in this article although accurate and is part of the bill is not supported by any statistical data that says the support coordination being provided is any better if provided by an agency or a sole proprietor (Solo Waiver Support Coordinator). Also lets say their was statistics and perhaps they said that an agency is better. The element of having to have 4 or more employees is also flawed because, it infers that the agency is required to have 4 employees and therefore Agencies will work hard to maintain at least that number regardless of performance, and if there is a vacancy of 1 Employee that would potentially cause the entire agency to be defunct, which means 1 person leaves ALL 4 are fired and the potential impact is to 172 consumers if the WSCs had full caseloads. 

I know what you're thinking just hire another person. Well there is currently a CRITICAL NEED for Waiver Support Coordinators in Florida, that means they are not OUT THERE to be hired. The person has to have a 4 year Degree, with 2 years experience working with Special needs and to work for an agency the current avg Starting pay is between $30k and $40k depending on which part of the state you are in. SO it is not easy to become a Waiver Support Coordinator and if you do, they quickly realize that Agencies are taking in most cases at least 50% of the rate that the consumers are being billed for. 

Florida Senate Bill 82, SB82 SB 82 is not a well thought out or well written plan.