{"id":455574,"date":"2026-02-08T02:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/455574\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T02:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:33:09","slug":"behind-the-big-defeat-for-broward-public-hospitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/455574\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the big defeat for Broward public hospitals"},"content":{"rendered":"

The suspense is mostly gone from Florida\u2019s one-party-dominated Legislature. But not quite.<\/p>\n

The Capitol is usually as predictable as a B-movie \u2014 \u201cRevenge of the Nerds II\u201d comes to mind \u2014 which is why legislative sessions no longer draw crowds of lobbyists. They still watch closely on their smartphones, but they don\u2019t need to show up, because they already know how it ends: the Republicans clobber the Democrats.<\/p>\n

So when the unexpected happens, it\u2019s a refreshing sign that the system can still work.<\/p>\n

\"Steve<\/p>\n

Mike Stocker\/Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n

Steve Bousquet, South Florida Sun Sentinel columnist.<\/p>\n

Broward\u2019s two big public hospital districts appeared to have it \u201cgreased\u201d to win passage of a brief and broadly worded bill<\/a> to let them do any type of joint venture together without having to worry about antitrust laws in a ruthlessly competitive arena, fighting with for-profit hospitals for patients.<\/p>\n

The two districts can collect property taxes from Broward residents, and they employ 18 lobbyists<\/a> in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n

They found an influential sponsor in Senator Joe Gruters of Sarasota. Though he is not from Broward, he is a savvy legislator, a long-time ally of President Trump and president of the Republican National Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bill (SB 1122)<\/a>\u00a0is three short paragraphs. In the Senate, there are more<\/a> than twice as many Republicans as Democrats.<\/p>\n

What could possibly go wrong? In this case, just about everything.<\/p>\n

\"SHane<\/p>\n

The Florida Channel<\/p>\n

Shane Strum, CEO of Broward Health and interim CEO of Memorial Healthcare System.<\/p>\n

Under the direction of Shane Strum, interim CEO of South Broward\u2019s Memorial Healthcare System and CEO of Broward Health in the county\u2019s north region, the districts promised better health care access, more consumer choice and shorter waits for appointments. Who could be against that?<\/p>\n

The districts seemed so sure of victory, they didn\u2019t bother to cultivate the Broward Democrats who speak for the districts\u2019 patients.<\/p>\n

As lobbyists for private HCA Florida Healthcare, with a big presence in Broward, persistently lobbied against the bill, a leading House Democrat, Rep. Kelly Skidmore of Boca Raton, wrote an opinion essay<\/a> in the Sun Sentinel that described a stealth effort by Strum & Co. to hoodwink the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should make that case openly in public hearings, welcome community input, and ultimately hold a vote of the taxpayers who fund these institutions. Anything less undermines public trust,\u201d Skidmore wrote.<\/p>\n

What Skidmore wrote is exactly what Broward legislators should have been saying six months ago.<\/p>\n

But, feeling snubbed, Broward Democrats gradually voiced their frustrations.<\/p>\n

One by one, five of them criticized Strum\u2019s strategy<\/a> in a Sun Sentinel editorial that appeared the day before the first scheduled Senate committee hearing.<\/p>\n

In this paper\u2019s opinion, so many questions remain that the Legislature should table the idea for one more year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlow it down,\u201d we urged \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the bill was included on the agenda of the Senate Community Affairs Committee, but as a crowd gathered, Gruters was nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n

The committee chairman announced that the bill was temporarily postponed \u2014 \u201cTP\u2019d\u201d in Tallahassee jargon. That is usually a sign of imminent death for a bill, and most legislators prefer to avoid the humiliation of public rejection.<\/p>\n

On almost every bill, the sponsor, aided by lobbyists, informally counts heads to make sure the votes are there.<\/p>\n

In this case, they obviously weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a lot of pushback,\u201d Gruters said later. \u201cSometimes, these bills are too heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senators can only tell a colleague \u201cI really need you on this one\u201d so many times.<\/p>\n

As the sponsor of 15 other bills, Gruters said there was \u201cno need to waste bandwidth\u201d with the outcome in doubt. He called the bill \u201ca heavy lift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate committee hearings usually last for two hours, and the antitrust questions alone would have devoured a lot of precious time. Gruters needed just five votes on the eight-person committee, but that apparently was too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just didn\u2019t have the votes to get it across the finish line,\u201d said a committee member, Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens.<\/p>\n

Jones said he was leaning toward voting yes, but had concerns that antitrust laws protect consumers from price-gouging by health insurers and other abuses.<\/p>\n

Another panel member, Sen. Barbara Sharief, D-Miramar, a health care expert, said she would have voted no.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like we shouldn\u2019t be circumventing any antitrust laws,\u201d Sharief said. \u201cBesides, they (the districts) seem to work just fine together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undaunted, Strum told me in a text message: \u201cWe are pressing ahead because our community needs this legislation, and our health systems do, too \u2026 The work continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. He has covered the Florida Legislature for more than 30 years. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com<\/a> or at (850) 567-2240.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The suspense is mostly gone from Florida\u2019s one-party-dominated Legislature. But not quite. The Capitol is usually as predictable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[1653,3200,97,252,253,2558,1767,55607],"class_list":["post-455574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-columnists","tag-commentary","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}