If the seven hurricanes that hit Florida over 2004 and 2005 didn’t do enough damage, they are now costing the state more than $480 million in reduced Medicaid dollars from the federal government, the state’s congressmen were told Wednesday.

The reason: The hurricane recovery created jobs, which raised the state’s per capita income and skewered a formula the federal government uses to calculate its share of Medicaid costs, said Dyke Snipes, deputy secretary for Medicaid at the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

Dyke told a group of Florida’s congressmen that the state’s per capita income has always closely followed the nation’s. When the national average goes up, Florida’s has risen about the same; when it’s dropped, Florida’s has dipped a similar amount.

Until the hurricanes.

That’s when Florida’s per capita income spiked higher than the country’s for two years, he said. Florida is now back in line with the rest of the country, but the federal government uses a three year average, and the two years that income went up affect the calculation.

Snipes estimated that if Florida never had the spike, the federal government would be contributing more to Medicaid costs. Instead, the lower federal share is costing Florida $267 million this year and will cost another $213 in the next budget year, he said.

“Florida’s unique, this has never happened before. It certainly builds a case to develop some strategy, some way to address this,” Snipes said.

He convinced Florida’s House members that they have that case.

“It’s one of the best presentations we’ve seen in years on how we can explain a shortfall,” said Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Before the presentation, state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, told the House members he was concerned about the shortfall.

“A lot of people are going to be effected by it,” Hill said. “We want to make sure that we stay on top of that and if there’s anything we can do on our level we’ll continue to do it.”

Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor, who asked Gov. Charlie Crist the day before to put pressure on the White House for a Medicaid fix, warned that cuts are going to be a serious problem and told Snipes his information helped.

“We have the ammunition and we have the proof to show this is an anomaly,” she said.