Scott Powers
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris King on Thursday morning unveiled his full health care platform, which includes accepting Medicaid expansion, pushing insurers to compete more, and making it easier for doctors to provide telemedicine.
King also announced the start of a campaign tour to promote the plan. It kicks off with several stops in St. Petersburg this afternoon including a 5 p.m. visit to the Warehouse Arts District. Events in Sarasota and Punta Gorda are planned for Friday and Saturday.
King’s health care plan, which he calls “Florida’s Promise,” starts with the standard of all Democrats’ platforms: accepting the federal offer of Medicaid expansion in Florida, which would provide coverage for low-income working Floridians who make too much money to qualify for standard Medicare but not enough money to qualify for ObamaCare subsidies. Estimates typically say 800,000 to 1 million people fall into the poverty gap. King says 400,000 individuals would qualify immediately.
Citing reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, King declares in his platform statement, “If we expand Medicaid, we can lower costs for people shopping in the Florida marketplaces, too. States that have expanded Medicaid have 7 percent lower marketplace premiums than states that do not.”
The marketplace is the area where the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, provides policy options to people not receiving health care coverage elsewhere. In Florida that marketplace has been plagued by high costs and limited competition, with many counties having only one insurance company participating.
King notes that in those counties there typically still are three or four insurance companies providing policies through Medicare and Medicaid, and he vowed to use “carrots and sticks” to encourage them to also provide Affordable Care Act coverage there as well. He also said he would push to increase enrollments, including using public spaces to do so, with the anticipation that with more people participating more insurance companies would show interest, and costs would fall through competition.
“If we achieve universal participation from insurance companies, Floridians in the highest-cost counties could pay close to 40 percent less for insurance,” King stated, citing an analysis of marketplace plan premiums in Florida.
King cited the growth of telemedicine to provide basic health care between doctors and patients and said it has been hampered in Florida by licensing requirements.
“I will propose rational improvements to our state licensing laws. We will propose ways to take down barriers through the use of interstate licensing compacts, model rules and agreements, and legislation that promotes license portability, especially for providers in military families,” he stated.
He proposed using the state’s Cancer Drug Donation Program as a model for a new statewide program to provide donated unused prescription medicines to Florida’s neediest patients.
And he called for considering marijuana among other alternatives to opioids in treating patients, to address the opioid addition epidemic.
