January 14, 2015
By Ilana Kowarski,
Expanding Medicaid in Florida would mean $114 million annually for Brevard County and would cover thousands here who currently have no health insurance, said health care experts at a forum Wednesday.
At least 17,500 of Brevard’s poor would be affected by this change, which would allow them to gain access to health care at a subsidized rate.
When Florida declined to participate in the expanded Medicaid program, it left approximately 750,000 state residents in the “Medicaid Gap.” That is they made too much money or otherwise didn’t qualify for traditional Medicaid, but did not earn enough to qualify for subsidies to buy health insurance on exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” That law was written with the assumption that all states would participate in the expanded Medicaid program.
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The keynote speaker of the health forum, Joan Alker of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, said that Florida had the second highest percentage of uninsured people in the nation, trailing only Texas, another state that did not expand its Medicaid program.
“Florida has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation and is lagging behind other states in bringing in the federal dollars sitting on the table to help them meet those needs,” said Alker, a prominent scholar whose research focuses on Medicaid. “Florida could catch up very quickly by taking advantage of the flexibility the federal government is offering right now in allowing states to design their own solutions to meeting the needs of their uninsured residents.”
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