Florida Men Accused of Supporting Pakistani Taliban

 

MIAMI — Six people, including two imams at South Florida mosques, have been indicted on federal charges of providing financial support and encouraging violence by the Pakistani Taliban, the United States attorney here announced Saturday.

The indictment, which was handed up on Thursday, charged Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, the imam at the Miami Mosque (also known as the Flagler Mosque), the oldest mosque in Miami. The indictment also charged two of the imam’s sons: Izhar Khan, 24, the imam at the Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in nearby Margate, Fla.; and Irfan Khan, 37, of North Lauderdale, Fla. All three men are American citizens who are originally from Pakistan, the authorities said.

The four-count indictment charges the Khans, and three others living in Pakistan, with conspiring to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas, as well as with conspiring to provide about $45,000 in financial support to the Pakistani Taliban from 2008 to 2010.

“Despite being an imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace,” Wilfredo A. Ferrer, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “Instead, as today’s charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming.”

Hafiz and Izhar Khan are scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami on Monday afternoon. Irfan Khan will be arraigned in Los Angeles on Monday. Each of the four counts in the indictment carries a maximum 15-year prison term.

Prosecutors said the indictment did not charge the mosques. They added that the defendants were charged “based on their provision of material support to terrorism, not on their religious beliefs or teachings.”

The Muslim Communities Association of South Florida announced that Hafiz Khan had been suspended indefinitely from his mosque.

“Our organizations, together through the Coalition of South Florida Muslim Organizations, has been working with the U.S. attorney’s office and the Miami F.B.I. office,” the association said in a statement released Saturday afternoon, “and appreciate the efforts of law enforcement to root out potential sources and supporters of terrorism.”

“We stand together with the U.S. attorney, Wilfredo Ferrer, and the men and women of the F.B.I., and have been and will be cooperating with law enforcement to our fullest ability,” the Muslim association added.

The charges of supporting the Pakistani Taliban but not actually carrying out operations are the most common types of terrorism prosecutions that American authorities have pursued since the Sept. 11 attacks. Of the 50 top terrorism cases since 9/11, about 70 percent have involved financing or other support to terrorist groups, according to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.

The Pakistani Taliban is closely allied with Al Qaeda and is responsible for attacks against Pakistani police and military targets in recent years. Pakistani authorities believe that a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan on Friday that killed more than 80 cadets from a government paramilitary force.

The indictment comes at a tense moment in relations between the United States and Pakistan after Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by the Navy Seals on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

On Saturday, the Pakistani Parliament condemned the raid as a “unilateral action” and “a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” and demanded a formal review of the country’s relationship with the United States.

F.B.I. agents arrested Hafiz Khan and his son Izhar in South Florida on Saturday, the authorities said. Irfan Khan was arrested in Los Angeles, they said.

Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from Miami, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

 

Worries About ‘Convenience Casinos’ in Florida

 

That these cafes are cash machines — and take in as much as $100,000 a week — is no secret to robbers.

And so, at 1 a.m. on April 19, three armed men tried to rob the place at a time when more than three dozen people were playing slot machine-type games on the cafe’s computer terminals. A security guard shot and killed one of the men; the other two fled and were being sought. A woman hiding in the cafe bathroom told a 911 operator that the robbery was happening in “the casino, in Apopka.”

The shooting death in a place that some customers call a casino has brought fresh scrutiny to Florida’s quickly multiplying “Internet sweepstakes cafes,” which now total nearly 1,000 statewide and are estimated to gross more than $1 billion this year, according to industry analysts, state legislators and their aides, and lawyers in the gambling industry.

It has also renewed calls by several county sheriffs for a statewide ban on the cafes’ games. They say the businesses are magnets for crime because they usually have large sums of cash on hand. Since nine sweepstakes cafes have opened in Seminole County, crimes at those addresses have increased 14 percent, according to data compiled by the sheriff’s office.

A bill was brought before the State Legislature this session that would have prohibited the games. Its proponents cite a host of concerns — worries about crime, compulsive gambling and morality. But the bill was rejected after an aggressive lobbying campaign by the companies that franchise some of the cafes. It did not help, industry critics say, that two state legislators own Internet sweepstakes cafes themselves.

Labeled by critics as “convenience casinos,” the cafes offer computerized “sweepstakes” games to customers who buy Internet time or phone cards. “Points” can be redeemed for cash, and jackpots are as high as $15,000, employees said. Lawyers for the owners have likened the slotlike and video poker games, with names like Cobra Cash and Fruit Paradise, to the Monopoly prize cards offered by McDonald’s restaurants.

The cafes operate in a legal gray zone in Florida and a dozen other states. Several Florida sheriffs have raided the cafes, arguing that the computer games, operated via the Web, are nothing more than a vaguely disguised form of illegal gambling.

In January, the Seminole County Commission passed a law banning the Internet cafes, but a federal judge issued a temporary order that stopped the county from enforcing the law while its constitutionality was considered.

“I just want clarity,” said Sheriff Jim Coats of Pinellas County, whose department has written to cafes ordering them to shut down within 30 days or face prosecution. “The Legislature ought to make the law clear. If someone goes in there and utilizes these machines and pays by cash, where does that cash go? No one knows. We need regulation.”

Florida is already awash in state-sanctioned gambling. There is a popular state lottery. There are eight Indian casinos. And there are nearly two dozen thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks and jai alai frontons — some with slot machines and all offering high-stakes poker games.

And in the last five years, the emergence of convenience casinos has put places offering jackpots next to neighborhood coffee shops and dry cleaners. The explosion of the games has led to complaints that they are addictive and prey on some of the state’s poorest residents.

“Florida now has the most diverse gaming industry of any place in the country, including Vegas, where the lottery and Internet sweepstakes cafes don’t even exist,” said Marc W. Dunbar, a Tallahassee lawyer who represents gambling companies. “We have every kind of gaming here, everything. And we have this massive underground industry in the state — there are so many places for people to get their fix.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 6, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the location of the Fun City Sweepstakes cafe. It is in Palm Harbor, Fla., not North Port.

View the original article here

Worries About ‘Convenience Casinos’ in Florida

 

That these cafes are cash machines — and take in as much as $100,000 a week — is no secret to robbers.

And so, at 1 a.m. on April 19, three armed men tried to rob the place at a time when more than three dozen people were playing slot machine-type games on the cafe’s computer terminals. A security guard shot and killed one of the men; the other two fled and were being sought. A woman hiding in the cafe bathroom told a 911 operator that the robbery was happening in “the casino, in Apopka.”

The shooting death in a place that some customers call a casino has brought fresh scrutiny to Florida’s quickly multiplying “Internet sweepstakes cafes,” which now total nearly 1,000 statewide and are estimated to gross more than $1 billion this year, according to industry analysts, state legislators and their aides, and lawyers in the gambling industry.

It has also renewed calls by several county sheriffs for a statewide ban on the cafes’ games. They say the businesses are magnets for crime because they usually have large sums of cash on hand. Since nine sweepstakes cafes have opened in Seminole County, crimes at those addresses have increased 14 percent, according to data compiled by the sheriff’s office.

A bill was brought before the State Legislature this session that would have prohibited the games. Its proponents cite a host of concerns — worries about crime, compulsive gambling and morality. But the bill was rejected after an aggressive lobbying campaign by the companies that franchise some of the cafes. It did not help, industry critics say, that two state legislators own Internet sweepstakes cafes themselves.

Labeled by critics as “convenience casinos,” the cafes offer computerized “sweepstakes” games to customers who buy Internet time or phone cards. “Points” can be redeemed for cash, and jackpots are as high as $15,000, employees said. Lawyers for the owners have likened the slotlike and video poker games, with names like Cobra Cash and Fruit Paradise, to the Monopoly prize cards offered by McDonald’s restaurants.

The cafes operate in a legal gray zone in Florida and a dozen other states. Several Florida sheriffs have raided the cafes, arguing that the computer games, operated via the Web, are nothing more than a vaguely disguised form of illegal gambling.

In January, the Seminole County Commission passed a law banning the Internet cafes, but a federal judge issued a temporary order that stopped the county from enforcing the law while its constitutionality was considered.

“I just want clarity,” said Sheriff Jim Coats of Pinellas County, whose department has written to cafes ordering them to shut down within 30 days or face prosecution. “The Legislature ought to make the law clear. If someone goes in there and utilizes these machines and pays by cash, where does that cash go? No one knows. We need regulation.”

Florida is already awash in state-sanctioned gambling. There is a popular state lottery. There are eight Indian casinos. And there are nearly two dozen thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks and jai alai frontons — some with slot machines and all offering high-stakes poker games.

And in the last five years, the emergence of convenience casinos has put places offering jackpots next to neighborhood coffee shops and dry cleaners. The explosion of the games has led to complaints that they are addictive and prey on some of the state’s poorest residents.

“Florida now has the most diverse gaming industry of any place in the country, including Vegas, where the lottery and Internet sweepstakes cafes don’t even exist,” said Marc W. Dunbar, a Tallahassee lawyer who represents gambling companies. “We have every kind of gaming here, everything. And we have this massive underground industry in the state — there are so many places for people to get their fix.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 6, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the location of the Fun City Sweepstakes cafe. It is in Palm Harbor, Fla., not North Port.

View the original article here

Florida Legislators Pass H.M.O. Plan for Medicaid

 

MIAMI — In a sweeping overhaul of its $21 billion Medicaid program, the Florida Legislature approved a bill Friday to shift nearly three million Medicaid recipients into managed-care programs in the hope of saving money and improving services.

“Medicaid has grown faster than any other part of our budget,” said State Senator Joe Negron, Republican of Stuart, who took the lead on the bill. “It is crowding out funding for education, economic development and other parts of the budget that are equally important.”

If signed into law as expected, the bill will make Florida, with one of the largest number of Medicaid patients and a high rate of uninsured, one of the biggest states to jump almost entirely from a traditional Medicaid payment system into managed care. The wholesale shift would begin in July 2012.

The bill, a compromise between the House and the Senate versions, would allow the state to decide how much to spend on Medicaid each year, share in the profits of managed-care companies if they exceed 5 percent and penalize networks that reneged on contracts. To help ensure better care for patients, the bill would also require plans to include specialists and provide higher reimbursement rates to doctors.

Patients would be charged $10 monthly premiums and $100 if they showed up at the emergency room with a non-emergency.

The state and managed-care companies would control which services to provide to Medicaid patients. In so doing, the legislation would do away with the existing fee-for-service system, in which the state pays providers for each service, a practice that has led to widespread fraud and inconsistent care. Reimbursement rates have dropped so low that many doctors choose not to treat Medicaid patients.

The Legislature’s bill seeks to remedy those issues with the requirement that plans include specialists and the higher reimbursement rates to doctors.

Another sweetener for doctors and hospitals is a provision that limits the amount they would have to pay out in malpractice damages for pain and suffering to $300,000 for each Medicaid claimant, unless the damages award is punitive. Senator Negron said the cap was appropriate because doctors who treat Medicaid patients are basically providing a public service and should be encouraged to do so.

But Democrats said it would be unreasonable to charge poor patients fees and unjust to treat them differently in malpractice cases. “Why is it that their pain and suffering is devalued?” asked State Senator Arthenia L. Joyner, a Democrat of Tampa.

Gov. Rick Scott, a wealthy former health care executive who made revamping Medicaid a priority, supports the legislation, which is projected to save $1.1 billion in its first year.

But the proposed law cannot go into effect without the approval of the federal government, which pays more than half of Florida’s Medicaid tab. Last month, the federal government advised legislators to choose the payment system that would guarantee that a percentage of the money, in this case 90 percent, would go to patient services. Instead, the Legislature chose the other option: to share profits with managed-care companies.

But Senator Negron said he was not worried. “We have given the federal government a hundred good reasons to approve our plan,” he said. “I think they will work with us because they have the same economic pressures that we have.”

Democrats and patient advocates said that they worried profit would get in the way of care and that some people would not be able to pay premiums. They expressed alarm that the bill is based on a five-year-old pilot program in five Florida counties that had decidedly mixed results. At least seven managed-care companies pulled out of the program in Broward County, and many patients — most of whom are low-income children or pregnant women — fled to networks run by hospitals.

Managed care is not new to Florida. About 60 percent of Medicaid patients are in some form of managed care but, outside of the pilot program, they must receive a mandated minimum level of benefits.

The Medicaid overhaul also extends into long-term care. Nursing home residents would shift into managed care, but the bill provides a separate provision for them. Payments would go directly to the nursing homes, bypassing managed-care companies, so money would not be deducted for administrative fees. Savings would come by shifting more people into home- and community-based programs.

Developmentally disabled people would be exempt from the managed care system for now. And each of the 11 managed-care regions in Florida would have to include a network run by a hospital or doctors. Those networks could continue to use the traditional payment system for three more years.

Those who already have insurance and are eligible for Medicaid would receive a voucher from the state to apply to their policies.

View the original article here

Florida Puts Overhaul Of Courts to the Voters

The debate over the most sweeping judicial overhaul package in the country ended late Monday in a partial victory for Republicans and Speaker Dean Cannon, who had championed the changes.

The fight pitted Republicans calling for the broad changes against Democrats, lawyers and senior and retired judges, who called their efforts an attempt to politicize the bench by stripping the judiciary of its independence and giving the governor power to name judges.

In the end, there were not enough Republicans willing to split the Supreme Court into separate divisions for criminal and civil cases. The change would have given Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, the power to appoint three new justices to hear appeals of civil cases.

Voting along party lines late Monday, the Senate instead approved a package of changes that increases the Legislature’s influence on the state court system.

The measure would give the House access to investigations of judges and allow the Legislature to repeal judicial procedural rules enacted by the Florida Supreme Court. Perhaps most important, the changes would allow the Senate to confirm the governor’s appointments of justices.

Critics said that all the changes, including the rejected Supreme Court provision, would have returned the state’s judiciary to the era of cronyism. A half-century ago, Florida’s judiciary was so riddled with old-school politics that a courthouse joke’s punch line packed the sting of truth: “What do you call a sitting judge? A friend of the governor.”

“Members, we’re going down a slippery slope,” Senator Christopher L. Smith, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, said in Monday’s debate. “We’re going into the judicial branch.”

Five Republican senators, most of whom are also lawyers, agreed with opponents of the bill, which included former justices, senior judges and Bob Graham, a Democrat and former governor and United States senator.

Mike Haridopolos, the Senate president, told reporters he had failed to deliver enough Republican votes to get the 60 percent needed to pass the bill with the Supreme Court provision intact. “The person to blame is me,” he said.

Legislative tug-of-wars with the judiciary occur in some state houses every year. But the tussles are usually limited to a single, narrow issue. What has made Florida’s fight different is the breadth of the proposed changes.

The debate also came at a time when the court system, like Florida itself, is struggling with a financial crisis. Fewer lawsuits are being filed, which means a decline in filing fees, and that has left the courts with a $74 million shortfall. The resolutions in the Legislature guarantee full financing, but several senior judges said financial security for the courts in exchange for a less independent bench was a bad trade-off.

In the past month, the battle became intensely partisan and even personal. Republican legislators talked about the need to rein in the Supreme Court’s power. (Last year, the court tossed out three ballot initiatives championed by the Legislature, both houses of which are controlled by Republicans.)

“Our Supreme Court of Florida has failed us over and over,” Representative Charles E. Van Zant, Republican of Palatka, said last month on the House floor. “This Legislature will send a message that should be sent.”

Predictably, the fervor of the advocates for the changes alarmed some current and former judges, including Raoul G. Cantero, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican.

“If I were on the court, I’d be very disturbed by what is going on in the Legislature,” said Mr. Cantero, who retired in 2008. “There is a strong antijudiciary feeling that I feel is very counterproductive.”

The proposals, which are amendments to the State Constitution, would then be decided by Florida voters next year. Sixty percent of state voters are needed for the amendments to be approved.

The bill was a priority of Speaker Cannon, Republican of Winter Park.

“Is the judiciary independent? Yes,” Mr. Cannon said in a recent interview. “Omnipotent? No. Florida went too far with power to the judiciary after the late ’60s and early ’70s, and all we are doing is trying to establish a more efficient judicial branch.”

Critics argued that Mr. Cannon was motivated in part by revenge against the Supreme Court for striking down the three ballot initiatives approved by the Legislature. The justices concluded that the ballot initiative about political redistricting was intended to mislead voters.

“That’s completely untrue,” Mr. Cannon said of the critics’ accusation. “People who live in the status quo fight against any change of the status quo. But that doesn’t mean these changes aren’t what’s best for the state of Florida.”

After the vote Monday night that stripped out the proposal to split the state’s highest court, Mr. Cannon remained upbeat. “It’s a win,” he told reporters. “It’s absolutely a win.”

 

In Florida, G.O.P. Help for Unions

But now it looks as if the bill could falter before the legislative session ends next week. Unions representing teachers, firefighters, the police and other public employees say they have persuaded nearly half of the Senate’s Republicans to oppose the bill by reminding them that in Florida, far more than in most states, organized labor has supported Republicans.

“We have traditionally been a Republican-based organization,” said James Preston, president of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police. “How much more conservative can you get than the police officers? Who wants to go against the cops and firefighters on these matters?”

Still, the unions’ success is surprising, especially since Republican lawmakers in traditionally labor-friendly states like Wisconsin and Ohio have passed far tougher antiunion legislation this year. In Florida, just one in 20 of workers in the state belongs to a union.

By some counts, 12 of the 28 Republican senators are against the latest version of Mr. Thrasher’s bill, which would require public employee unions to get each member’s permission each year before they could use that person’s dues for political purposes. Senate Democrats are unified in opposition to the bill. Republican and business leaders — noting that Florida’s state employees contribute nothing toward their pensions — have praised Mr. Thrasher’s bill because it would reduce unions’ leverage over health coverage and pensions.

“These are government unions that are negotiating oftentimes against the taxpayers,” said Mark Wilson, president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not fair that the taxpayer-funded payroll system is collecting union dues that are used politically against the taxpayer.”

But Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a Republican representing Miami, said the bill was too punitive. “I don’t think it’s necessary legislation,” he said. “It doesn’t do anything to create jobs. It creates a lot of discord unnecessarily.”

He said the fact that unions in Florida were weak had forced them to be bipartisan. Using Wisconsin as an example, he said, “You just don’t have the animus between union and antiunion here that you have in some other places.”

Indeed, some of the bill’s Republican opponents have enjoyed labor’s campaign support and worked with unions on numerous issues.

Mr. Thrasher’s bill originally had two main provisions. In addition to requiring members’ permission for using dues money for politics, the legislation would have barred the state or any community from deducting union dues from workers’ paychecks and forwarding that money to unions.

Union lobbyists repeatedly said the bill would cripple the payroll deductions that fuel labor’s political efforts while continuing to allow similar deductions at 360 organizations and private companies, including insurers, that spend money on politics.

Unions also said they were being scapegoated for Florida’s budget problems. They argued that the recession and Wall Street, not union-negotiated pay and benefits, caused Florida’s $3.6 billion deficit.

Those arguments resonated with lawmakers.

Rene Garcia, a Republican senator who represents Hialeah, said he saw little need for the bill because Florida’s public employees were already not required to join the unions that represent them or to pay dues. “I don’t like this bill because it’s not fair when you single out one group,” he said.

Mr. Thrasher, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, saw that he did not have the votes for his original legislation even though the House had already passed a similar bill. So he dropped the provision eliminating the dues check-off.

Mr. Thrasher did not respond to interview requests. But Senator Don Gaetz, a Republican from Destin, said the bill was revised to make clear that it did not intend to cripple unions.

“There’s no intent to stop unions from using funds for other very legitimate purposes,” he said. “The issue is, should the taxpayers of Florida be collecting money from public employees to be used by a union for direct partisan purposes? And the answer to that is no.”

Unions continue to fight the watered-down bill. “It could make unions in Florida a toothless tiger in politics,” said Rich Templin, chief lobbyist for the state A.F.L.-C.I.O.

In a sign that the bill is in trouble, Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, personally lobbied four Republican senators on Wednesday to back it, according to Mr. Diaz de la Portilla.

Gary Rainey, president of the Florida Professional Firefighters, said there was not enough Senate support to pass the bill in an up-or-down vote. But he feared that Republican leaders would secure passage by attaching it to another bill.

“It’s been a continuous battle shoring up support,” he said. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.”

 

A Community College in Florida Works to Attract the Poor and the Presidential

Yet a community college in Miami with no trace of ivy and a policy of accepting just about everyone, even the hard luck cases, has managed to lure a trifecta of commanders in chief to its urban campus.

At Miami Dade College on Friday evening, President Obama delivered the commencement address, joining a roster that includes Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Over the years, Jimmy Carter, the elder President Bush and Gerald R. Ford have stopped in for round-table chats as have an assortment of first ladies, foreign presidents and cabinet members.

So how is it that an open-admission college that embraces academically risky students carries such cachet?

“We call it a dream factory,” said Eduardo J. Padrón, the college’s president since 1995. “We give people who ordinarily wouldn’t have the opportunity a second chance.”

The college’s demographics make for political catnip. Presidents and other members of the nation’s elite want to align themselves with an institution that has had an amazing run of success stories among its Hispanic and black students. “If we want to win the future,” said Hannah M. August, a White House spokeswoman, “we need to outeducate our global competitors, and schools like Miami Dade are helping us lead the way.”

With an enrollment of 170,000, Miami Dade is the country’s largest college (not including online universities). Ninety percent of its students are minorities, and it graduates more black and Hispanic students than any other college. This is no small accomplishment in light of the country’s stubbornly low college attendance and graduation rates among minorities.

Take a Google tour of Miami notables and an impressive list crops up of graduates and former students of Miami Dade College (or Dade County Junior College, as it was known when it opened in 1960): members of Congress (Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and John L. Mica, both Florida Republicans and House committee leaders), mayors, actors (Andy Garcia and Sylvester Stallone), music magnates (Emilio Estefan), baseball players, a former president of Panama and an assortment of successful architects, lawyers, bank presidents, hospital directors and business owners.

“I think if it weren’t for Miami Dade, I would be doing something very different right now, working in a gas station or something,” said Cesar L. Alvarez, the executive chairman of the law firm Greenberg Traurig and a 1967 graduate who said the college inspired him to achieve. “I didn’t have money to go anywhere else, and I seriously doubt anyone else would have taken me.”

The college’s home state, an electoral prize, is irresistible for any politician. But many attribute its allure for presidents and students to Dr. Padrón, who boasts of Miami Dade’s community college soul. He has elevated its status and nurtured his political relationships. Mr. Obama selected him to head the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He has held similar posts under past presidents.

Like many in Miami, Dr. Padrón is an alumnus. “He was his own case study,” Mr. Alvarez said.

Dr. Padrón attended the college in the 1960s, fresh from Cuba, with only a smattering of English and no chance of attending any other college. He excelled, eventually working his way to a doctorate in economics at the University of Florida. He rebuffed a lucrative job with DuPont, choosing instead to pay a social debt to his community. He started working at the college and has stayed for 40 years.

Rather than encourage professors to polish their credentials by publishing papers, Dr. Padrón urges them to be passionate about teaching and committed to helping struggling students, many of whom barely graduated high school or struggle to afford college. Some take 10 years to graduate because they are working their way through school. Others charge through in two years and transfer to top-tier universities.

Miami Dade also focuses on training students for real-world jobs; it graduates more nurses, for example, than any other college.

“Our students, a majority, come to us unprepared,” said Dr. Padrón, who said Miami public schools, with some exceptions, often fail to properly educate the city’s children. “It takes effort and money to get them to a level they can compete. If we say, ‘You are not prepared. We won’t admit you,’ thousands and thousands would not be able to come to college. The cycle of poverty would continue. That’s why this is so crucial.”

That was true of Mr. Estefan, a Miami institution who was just another broke Cuban refugee with no option but Miami Dade. He squeezed in courses at night between his day job as an office boy at the Bacardi Corporation and an evening job as an accordion player at an Italian restaurant. Mr. Estefan, now a world-renowned music producer, credits the college for giving him a foundation for what it takes to run a business.

When he aspired to jump into the music business, people told him he was too poor, too foreign, too old. “Then at Miami Dade, one professor said to me, ‘In this country, you can do anything.’?”

 

In Florida, H.M.O.’s Would Treat Medicaid Patients

The cuts and changes being sought by the Republican-led Legislature and encouraged by the new Republican governor, Rick Scott, a wealthy former hospital company executive, are deeper than those in many other states.

In the past 11 years, the cost of Medicaid in Florida has grown to $21 billion from $9 billion and amounts to a third of the state budget. The federal government pays more than half the tab.

“There is a consensus that the Medicaid system is irretrievably broken,” said State Senator Joe Negron, a Republican who took the lead in writing the Senate bill, which is expected to come to a vote before the legislative session ends a week from Friday. The House approved its bill this month. The changes could go into effect as early as next year.

“I’ve never seen something where we are spending $21 billion and nobody is happy,” Mr. Negron said. “We were not going to kick the can down the road another year.”

Relying loosely on a five-year-old pilot program to shift care to H.M.O.’s, Florida lawmakers are poised to scrap the traditional model in which the state pays doctors for each service they perform. Instead, almost all of Florida’s Medicaid recipients would be funneled into state-authorized, for-profit H.M.O.’s or networks run by hospitals or doctors. H.M.O.’s or networks would also manage the long-term care of the elderly, shifting them away from nursing homes and leading to an expansion of in-home care. Lawmakers who support the bill say the state needs this flexibility in curtailing the exploding cost of Medicaid.

The Florida legislation is being closely watched by other states as they tackle the rapid growth of enrollment and the cost of care. Because Florida has three million Medicaid patients and a high number of uninsured people, a swift jump into managed care would be significant. And while many states use managed care for Medicaid users in one form or other, the Florida proposals stand out because they would set possible limits on services, giving the state and H.M.O.’s the right to deny some benefits that are now offered to patients. This would require federal permission.

“If Florida adopts this method of looking at managed care, other states will definitely look at that, and this is a tool we can use,” said Michael W. Garner, the president of the Florida Association of Health Plans, which lobbies for H.M.O.’s. “The toolbox is pretty empty right now.”

But there is concern across the state that the emerging proposals will not only reduce available health care for millions, but also leave the most vulnerable — the disabled, the elderly and those with serious chronic illnesses — at risk. An April study of the pilot program by Georgetown University raised doubts about patient services and cost efficiency, saying there was too little data. For some, the proposals hold a fearful prospect.

Vicki Ahern, 40, a single mother in Davie, Fla., who is her son’s full-time caregiver, spent several years trying to cobble together a network of medical specialists across several counties to help her son, Keith, 16, grapple with muscular dystrophy, spinal injuries and debilitating pain.

Then, suddenly, the network crumbled. With 10 days’ notice, Ms. Ahern said, Keith was shuttled into the pilot project, which transferred Medicaid patients in five counties to H.M.O.’s and hospital- or doctor-run networks. The counties are Baker, Clay, Duval and Nassau in the northeast and Broward in the south.

The participating H.M.O.’s in Broward County, where the Aherns live, listed none of Keith’s doctors or therapists; they offered few specialists and fewer services. The one rheumatologist who proved helpful dropped out of the program because of low reimbursement rates and frustrations with the bureaucracy.

“I started panicking and considered moving out of state, but we couldn’t,” Ms. Ahern said. “I was very angry because I knew he wasn’t going to get his services. If you have a chronic disability or are medically fragile, then forget it.”

After several months in the pilot program, Ms. Ahern discovered she could opt out, a long bureaucratic process, and she did.

The two bills now in play in Tallahassee are modeled in large part on the pilot program. It allowed the state to provide a set amount of money for managed-care companies to more efficiently serve each Medicaid patient, who include low-income children and pregnant women, the developmentally disabled and others.

The bills vary: the House version would send the developmentally disabled to managed care; the Senate’s would not. The Senate is pushing block grants, which would restrict financing further by creating a cap on the Medicaid budget each year; the House version does not.

The proposed changes worry health care advocates and Medicaid patients, who say that the for-profit nature of H.M.O.’s makes it difficult to care for the neediest.

The pilot program appears to have been far from successful, according to the Georgetown report: H.M.O.’s fled because of low reimbursement rates. Among those leaving was WellCare, which left 55 percent of Duval County’s Medicaid patients in limbo. The company was later accused of cherry-picking Medicaid patients to maximize profits, and five of its former executives were indicted on fraud charges.

Patients were shuffled from H.M.O. to H.M.O. and reported difficulty gaining access to services. In other cases, doctors listed in the network stopped accepting Medicaid patients. Supporters of the bills say that the rates would be adjusted to increase H.M.O. participation and that oversight would be bolstered.

Lawmakers are also planning steep budget cuts in the Medicaid program to tackle the state’s yawning deficits. This would make the shift even more burdensome, Democrats say.

“It can’t work,” said Representative Elaine J. Schwartz, a Democrat, who held community meetings on the program in Broward County. “It undermines the basic purpose of Medicaid, which is to provide services. If the private sector could have made money on Medicaid, they would have. With this plan, we are basically handing them $20 billion. Two groups of people will suffer: the patients because they are bamboozled and the taxpayer who is not getting their money’s worth.”

Joan Alker of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown, who co-wrote the April report, said that so far there was no solid evidence of how much the pilot program had saved or whether the savings came from denying services. Florida pays among the lowest rates in the country for each Medicaid patient, ranking 43rd, making Medicaid less expensive than private insurance, Ms. Alker said.

Mr. Negron said he envisioned $1 billion in savings from his proposal in its first year and perhaps $4 billion in subsequent years.

“One of my guiding principles,” he said, “is that our friends and neighbors on Medicaid should not receive fewer benefits than their counterparts, but they shouldn’t have a more generous benefit either.”

 

Conservative Congressman’s Star Power Extends Beyond Florida District

But the most compelling part of Representative Allen B. West of Florida is his own biography, there for all to see: an African-American Tea Party activist Republican congressman and ally of hard-right Israelis who, after his beloved career in the Army ended under a cloud, defeated the sitting Democrat in a largely white, politically polarized district here and quickly became one of the right’s most visible spokesmen.

Mr. West’s fans in his district, which stretches over two counties along the east coast of Florida, are both numerous and loud; hundreds fill his town hall-style meetings, many of them favoring T-shirts bearing his image. At a recent Tea Party rally in Washington, supporters flocked to him like sea gulls to a crust of baguette. Among the 87 House Republican freshmen, he ranks third in the latest fund-raising period for his re-election campaign; his $433,551 haul came largely through individual donations.

Mr. West’s popularity among conservatives goes far beyond South Florida. He was chosen to give the keynote speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and is frequently featured on the Fox News Channel and in other conservative settings where he enjoys explaining, reiterating or unleashing any number of incendiary remarks concerning what he often calls “the other side.”

There was his recent observation that liberal women “have been neutering American men,” and that the president of the United States is a “low-level socialist agitator.”

Mr. West scoffs at the notion that he has become a sensation. “I don’t drink my own tub water or read my own press,” he said in a brief interview before a town hall-style meeting here this week. “I tell the truth and I stand on convictions and you know what you’re getting.”

While Mr. West’s decision to cast himself as an iconoclast has made him a conservative star, it is unclear how well it will serve him as he seeks re-election next year in this swing district, where far more voters are likely to come out for a presidential election than in the midterm cycle.

With its two new Congressional seats, Florida will likely receive intensified national attention among swing states in 2012, perhaps highlighting this district — which was central to the disputed 2000 presidential recount — as one of the best tests of the Tea Party’s endurance outside reliably Republican districts.

Democrats have singled out Mr. West as one of their key freshmen to defeat. “He is the king of rhetoric,” said Mitch Ceasar, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Broward County. “And that is what separated him in 2010. But what swept him in then may be the gust of wind that sends him out.”

The 22nd Congressional District, which may well be redrawn to favor Republicans, is roughly 48 percent quite conservative, and another 48 percent quite liberal, say officials from both parties, who also say each party covets the remaining 4 percent, who are swing voters. The district went for Senator Barack Obama and Senator John Kerry in their respective presidential races.

Mr. West’s place in the Democratic crosshairs stems, he said, from the fact “that I scare the liberal establishment.”

“You’re looking at a black man who was brought up in the inner cities, career military, a conservative, married going on 22 two years, two beautiful daughters, and for whatever reason that really does scare them,” he said. “My theory is that for whatever reason I could cause others like me to reject these liberal social-welfare policies.”

Mr. West, 50, was born and raised in Atlanta, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee on an R.O.T.C. scholarship and holds two master’s degrees.

In the Army, he rose to battalion commander during the war in Iraq. His 22-year military career came to an end in that theater when he was relieved of his command after using a gun to coerce information from an Iraqi police officer during an interrogation. He retired with full rank, honors and benefits in 2004, and moved to Florida with his family. After a short stint as a high school teacher, he worked as a civilian adviser to the Afghan army, ran and lost against Representative Ron Klein in 2008, then came back to handily defeat Mr. Klein, a Democrat, in 2010.

Mr. West’s political beliefs hew closely to the most conservative members of the House; he was among the 59 House Republicans who voted against a deal worked out with Democrats to finance the government through the rest of the year, arguing that the included spending cuts did not go far enough, and says he will not vote to lift the nation’s debt ceiling without more cuts.

His views on the Middle East tend to tack even more to the right of the strongest supporters of Israel. During his campaign, Mr. West posted on his Web site a statement saying: “I do not support any creation of a Palestinian state, to do so would be to create a terrorist state. There is already a state for the Arabic people residing in the region called Palestine, Jordan.”

His recent remarks to a conservative Christian women’s group that women affiliated with liberal groups “have been neutering American men” are the sort that tend to attract attention. “America needs strong men,” Mr. West explained, adding, “the feminist movement was a great thing to push the equality of women but that does not mean you have to make men feel inferior or degrade them.”

Mr. West said he tends to keep to himself on Capitol Hill, where he is busy with hearings, meetings and constant reading. “So the end of the day I’m kind of tired,” he said, “about 10 or 10:30 at night I get to my little bat cave, then I’m back up at 5:30 to get in a five- or six-mile run and I’m back at it again. So right now it is not so much about hanging out with people as it is about making sure I am developing myself as a capable legislator.”

Ron Nixon contributed reporting from Washington.