St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and City Council member Darden Rice joined representatives of some of the leading health care advocates: Florida CHAIN (Community Health Action Information Network), Families USA- the national organization for health care consumers, Doctors for America, and local residents affected by Florida’s coverage gap for a news conference on Friday. On one of the first crisp Florida fall days this year, members of this group explained the stark difference between states that have provided their workers with Medicaid expansion and those that have not.
According to the speakers, in order for the Affordable Care Act to work in Florida, Medicaid expansion must be expanded. The focus today was on low-income families. Families USA points out the fact that these workers are the backbone of Florida’s economy. They say that Florida’s current Medicaid program only covers parents with extremely low incomes and no coverage for the same low income adults that don’t have children. For those in a family of three, and with an income of merely $6,930, the expansion of health care could cover incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
Philippe Villers, founder and president of Families USA, a national healthcare advocacy group, says that if 1 million people in Florida gain coverage, 70,000 jobs will be created, resulting in billions of dollars for its economy. “How many people realize that today in Florida and some other states, you can be too poor to get help?” he asks. “In Florida, in order to get help based on money, a family of three must make under $7,000, so if you make even 30 percent of minimum wage, you don’t qualify for help on Medicaid, but you are too poor to qualify for a Federal help. That leaves you right in the middle. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians are too poor to get help,” says Villers. “I consider that just plain immoral,” he says. Statistically, the worst city in the nation for coverage is Miami, at 25 percent, and Tampa and St. Pete are not far behind.
City Council member Darden Rice says, “23 percent of Pinellas County's population does not have health care coverage, and 54,000 of those fall into the Florida coverage gap. Working families are left out, because state law makers have turned down a common sense solution to accept federal funds to cover nearly a million of Florida’s working moms, dads, veterans, students and others.” She says that there are no financial limits to the burdens they have to suffer if they get sick, and that they shouldn't have to fear bankruptcy if they choose to seek medical attention. Often people without coverage or access to preventative care, wait until they are very sick and have to go to an emergency room. The “most expensive end of the spectrum," she says. Without this expansion, the federal government and taxpayers foot the bill. She asks, “Who pays for this broken system? We do. Taxpayers. It is our choice if we want to pay for an expensive system that doesn't work or whether we want to pay for a system that does work.”
Rice lists some of the occupations in which people suffer from the coverage gap the most. “ The people who work in restaurants and hotels as cooks, cashiers, housekeeping staff, ticket takers, you name it.” She says that health care should not only be accessible to the privileged, “especially when we have a common sense solution starring us in the face.”
Dr. Mona Mangat, local physician and chair of the Board of Directors for Doctors for America, sees the devastating result of the lack of coverage daily. “Expanding coverage saves lives and saves the state money. Every day that Florida’s leaders delay, our state loses $7 million in federal funding. That’s billions of dollars a year.” She believes the residents of Florida that fall within the coverage gap are more than just a number. “Expanding access to care is so much more than just a political game; it’s about catching cancers when they can still be treated, treating pre-diabetes before needing dialysis, controlling high blood pressure before you have a stroke or a heart attack, and managing chronic health problems so that people can live as productive lives as possible,” says Mangat.
A local resident experiencing the coverage gap, Tarika Collins, 45, was a corporate travel agent for fifteen years, but had to quit her job and has lost everything she owned, including her home, when she was diagnosed with heart disease and coronary artery disease. Referred to expensive specialists, turned away by clinics that don’t have the resources to help her with specialty care, ObamaCare referred her to Medicaid, and Medicaid turned her down, because she has a pending disability case. Meanwhile, after having lost everything, she says she has been hospitalized many times for rationing her medications, because she couldn't afford them. “I’d like to be able to go back to work, have the ability to live a functional life and pay for my care and continue to be a tax paying citizen,” says Collins.
Dr. John McDonough, Director for Executive and Continuing Professional Education,helped write the Affordable Care Act while working on the Senate Health Education Labor Committee. He explains, “The Affordable Care Act was written so that every state would expand their Medicaid program on January 1st, 2014, but in 2012 it was made optional for states to decide if they wanted to expand.” In 2013, the Florida House of Representatives rejected Medicaid expansion.
While the Federal government currently pays for 60 percent of the Medicaid program, it pays for all of the costs of expansion through 2016, and will gradually decline to 90 percent in 2020, where it will stay. Florida is among one of the remaining 23 states that have not expanded Medicaid.