Loyola discusses the federal government’s usurpation of state authority to regulate health care, the resultant failure of those interventions and mandates, why health care regulatory authority should be reserved to the states, and a mechanism for rolling back this federal overreach.

“The relentless expansion of the federal government into every area of our lives is incompatible with a Constitution based on local self-government, economic freedom, and shared sovereignty among state, federal, and local authorities. Health care regulation should be returned to the states, along with the tax revenues the federal government sucks away to fund its misguided programs, in order to ultimately lead to accessible and affordable health care for Americans.”

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“Passing the Health Care Compact in Florida” (PDF)

While the legislative reforms of early 2011 made improvements in the Florida Retirement System, further work is needed to keep Florida on the right track and avoid the financial disasters experienced by other states. Five recommendations for further reform include:

• Make the defined contribution/investment plan the default option for new hires who don’t express a preference.
• Limit employees switching between plans to the first year of employment .
• Lengthen the defined benefit/pension plan vesting period to 10 years from 8.
• Increase the employee contribution rate to 4% from 3%.
• Apply the above reforms to municipalities.

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View Full Brief:
“Pension Reform in Florida: Unfinished Business” (PDF)

FLVS is not the only online provider serving Florida students. Several others provide a variety of offerings in a variety of arrangements. In part because of 2008 legislation mandating that every school district must provide students with an online learning option, Florida districts have entered into contracts with online learning providers of every stripe to help them with home-schooled students, credit-recovery options, dropout-recovery programs, and advanced courses, to name a few.

Even with this growth of online learning in Florida, many observers continue to see it as merely a small item on the education menu, providing students with more choices that may better fit their educational needs. Yet online learning is much more than that. It is a disruptive innovation that has the potential to help transform the present-day monolithic, factory-model education system into a student-centric and far more affordable one that is suited to the needs of the 21st Century.

Florida is widely viewed as an early leader in this movement — not just because of the sheer volume of its online students, but also because of some of the policies it has put in place to create a higher-quality offering centered on student needs. Interestingly enough, most of these policies only touch FLVS, not other online providers serving students in the state. As a result, there are still significant opportunities for Florida to do much more with online learning. If the state plays its cards right, it has the potential to provide many more students and families with quality choices for their education and, in the process, to transform public education.

Adjunct Scholar Sandra Fabry gives an overview and analysis of the national transparency movement and provides recommendations for building upon recent steps that have been made in continuing Florida’s long tradition of “government in the sunshine.”

The paper consists of four sections. The first offers a very brief overview of the state’s current insurance environment. The second considers a proposal to bifurcate Florida’s homeowners’ insurance environment into pools respectively liable and exempt from special, unilaterally imposed state insurance premium taxes. The third considers other proposals impacting commercial property and the size of the hurricane catastrophe fund. Finally, the brief conclusion argues that, while all of these proposals deserve serious consideration, none will solve Florida’s insurance woes on its own.