Yesterday, the Florida Senate Select Committee on PPACA voted against a Florida Medicaid expansion on a straight party line vote – a surprise to some since a few Republicans on the committee, including Chairman Negron, had indicated that they were interested in moving forward. Many media sources are reporting that the Medicaid expansion is all but dead now.

I listened to much of the meeting and heard quite a different message –Chairman Negron said he is interested in developing a plan to move forward –“a Florida plan” as he called it – and was quite clear that he wants to accept the federal funds on the table.

We are lacking important details on the principles he laid out but they included looking at a benchmark plan with cost-sharing, using CHIP as a vehicle for coverage (as opposed to putting new beneficiaries into the exchange as the “Arkansas” model seeks to do), promoting some kind of healthy behaviors accounts, and moving Medicaid toward premium assistance more broadly.

Chairman Negron indicated that he thought his objectives could be achieved without a waiver of federal requirements – which suggests that he too is looking at the premium assistance option I blogged about a few weeks ago. Clearly there is a larger question as to whether there are enough Republican votes to move this plan forward, and the details will be incredibly important, but the reports of its death have been “greatly exaggerated”.