Here are eight things to know about this recent decision.
1. The rejection of the bill marks the third time legislators considered but declined to approve some form of healthcare expansion in Florida since the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
2. The Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange, while not an expansion of Medicaid, would serve a similar purpose by creating a framework for using federal funds to extend healthcare coverage to more low-income Floridians. It would have used more than $18 billion in federal funds over a ten-year period to expand the pool of low-income residents eligible for health plans and help them purchase it from private providers.
3. Opponents of the expansion bill called it an example of federal overreach, a costly entitlement program and an offspring of President Obama’s healthcare reform law, according to the New York Times.
4. The House voted 72 to 41 against the bill, with all 37 Democrats and four Republicans voting in favor of it. House Republicans were nearly uniformly opposed to using federal money to expand eligibility for patients covered under Medicaid, calling the proposed measure nothing short of Medicaid expansion by a different name. In contrast, the Republican-led Senate backed the plan in a 33 to 3 vote June 3.
5. Florida’s rejection of the Health Insurance Affordability Exchange represents a win for Republican Governor Rick Scott, who has flip-flopped between criticizing the PPACA and opposing Medicaid expansion in Florida and supporting it. For most of his first term, Gov. Scott said he did not support the expansion of Medicaid in Florida because it was too expensive and “just doesn’t make any sense,” according to a report from PolitiFact Florida. However, on Feb. 20, 2013, Gov. Scott announced a different stance, calling Medicaid expansion a “compassionate, common-sense step forward.” At the time, Gov. Scott said Florida would support a three-year expansion of Medicaid as long as the federal government paid 100 percent of the costs during that time. Although Gov. Scott’s announcement made waves across the country, the Florida Legislature never approved the expansion. Gov. Scott seemed to once again change his stance on Medicaid expansion with comments regarding Florida’s financial troubles with the Low-Income Pool, a separate federal healthcare program. Regarding the latest proposal to expand healthcare to low-income residents, Gov. Scott was adamantly opposed to expanding healthcare coverage to a wider pool of low-income residents this time, according to the report.
6. The bill was rejected despite an appeal from Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, who argued in a report that a vote to expand Medicaid coverage in Florida “would have major health benefits for its low-income citizens.” According to the report, issued by Mr. Furman’s office, Florida’s costs of uncompensated care would drop by $790 million in 2016 if expanded coverage was in effect.
7. Florida is one of 22 states to reject Medicaid expansion under the PPACA. “It’s something we cannot afford, not only in Florida but in the rest of the nation, if we have government controlled healthcare,” Representative Doug Broxson, a Republican in the Third District, in the Florida Panhandle, told the New York Times. “History tells us that anything the government is involved in tends to expand. I’m very concerned that we could spend all our gross national product on healthcare, and it would take away from every other program we have in the state.”
8. Data from the Census Bureau shows that 4.8 million Floridians — 24.2 percent of the state’s population — are uninsured, compared with the national uninsured rate of 15.3 percent.
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