Daniel TilsonGOP government shutdown shenanigans aside, the launch of Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges this week shows that Florida is lurching along on the rocky road to health-care reform.
It’s high time Floridians understood that the congressional melodrama in DC has little to do with actually blocking health reform and everything to do with conservative Republicans pandering for Tea Party votes in their 2014 re-election bids.
You may or may not think it bites, but the reality is that the law Gov. Rick Scott, Rush Limbaugh, the Koch Brothers and other conservatives have mockingly called “Obamacare” is still rolling out.
We keep hearing from the media that many Americans don’t understand or support “Obamacare”. Yet when you dig a little deeper, it turns out they support most of what’s in it.
The fact of the matter is that people who understand it better like it more. It seems that facts can blow away all the manmade clouds of name-calling and disinformation.
You’d think that by now even an anti-Obama-leaning Florida public would be ready to take a chance on health reform in a state with the second worst health-care crisis in America. In Florida, one in four folks is uninsured and many middle class folks unknowingly cover the uninsured through bait-and-switch premium and tax hikes, rising copayments, deductibles, and more.
You’d think increasing numbers of Floridians would notice that the same Republican Party that did nothing about a worsening crisis while in control of the state for nearly two decades is now suddenly actively engaged – in blocking a possible solution.
You’d hope lots of people would start ignoring both the phone calls from pollsters posing simplistic questions about “Obamacare” — and the reporting on those polls by lapdog political pundits.
You’d hope that people would start making phone calls to the governor and legislators, demanding that health care expansion be allowed to move forward in Florida.
The stakes couldn’t be much higher than they are right now.
The capacity of new insurance exchanges to sign up uninsured people for affordable and/or subsidized coverage will determine whether we as a state and nation begin catching up to the rest of the industrialized world that provides universal health care.
But our Republican governor and many Republican legislators keep getting in the way.
They’ve also blocked the Medicaid expansion called for by the Affordable Care Act, which if allowed to proceed would have the following impact on our economy:
- 1.2 million uninsured Floridians become eligible for Medicaid.
- Middle class taxpayers no longer pay for uninsured ER care.
- More than 65,000 new jobs in Florida are created in six years.
- More than $70 billion injected into Florida economy.
- More than $2.5 billion in tax relief for Florida businesses
Only a massive outpouring of public pressure on the governor and conservatives in the state House of Representatives will ensure that these and other benefits of health-care reform and expansion will ever be felt and sustained in our state.
