Miriam Harmatz is the Founder and Director of Advocacy at the Florida Health Justice Project (FHJP), a nonprofit advocacy organization engaged in expanding health care access and promoting health equity for vulnerable Floridians.
Ms. Harmatz holds a life-long belief in health care as a human right, and she has devoted her legal career to NHeLP’s motto: “securing health rights for those in need.” In 1974, she wrote her senior college thesis on why Congress failed to pass any of the promising national health insurance proposals debated in the 93rd Congress. Prior to leading FHJP, Ms. Harmatz was a Florida legal services poverty health lawyer and adjunct health law professor in the medical legal partnership at Florida International University College of Law.
As one of Florida’s leading Medicaid advocates, she has partnered with NHeLP in efforts that expanded access to health care at both the state and local level. These efforts included successful administrative complaints challenging admission deposits for indigent residents and discrimination against foreign-born county residents in the state’s largest public hospital. In federal court, Ms. Harmatz was lead counsel on Medicaid cases that succeeded in ensuring due process, prescription coverage, and EPSDT rights for Florida’s Medicaid recipients.
Ms. Harmatz received her B. A. degree from Stanford University and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1975. She received her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1979.
