Big money doctor fight ties up budget talks

In the opening days of the lawmaking session, two low-profile South Florida doctors helped funnel $70,000 to politicians and political groups, bringing their total contributions to an eye-opening $3 million in just one year. In the next two days, as lawmakers hammer out the state budget, it'll become clear if doctors Paul Zimmerman and Gerald Glass will get a return on their political investments. The two doctors are the founders of a Miramar-based company called Automated Healthcare Solutions, which sells software that workers-compensation doctors use to dispense medications in their office. But that profitable practice could be undermined by a little-debated provision slipped into an under-the-radar Senate budget bill at the behest of the insurance lobby, which says that doctors who dispense in-house are driving up the workers-compensation costs.