Rejecting Health Care Reform Could Cost Florida Billions Of Dollars

Submitted by Cheston Catalano

Florida Governor Rick Scott’s decision to ignore the Affordable Care Act could cost his state billions.

A 2010 state-by-state study by the Urban Institute and financed by the Kaiser Family Foundation projected that the Affordable Care Act would provide $20 billion in federal funds to Florida between 2014 and 2019 to expand Medicaid coverage to 951,622 new enrollees, including 683,477 that had been previously uninsured.

Over those same five years, Florida would need to come up with $1.2 billion to fund the expanded coverage, according to the 2010 study.

An updated analysis from the Urban Institute last week made no funding estimates but, using different assumptions, estimated that as many as 1.8 million uninsured Floridians — 45 percent of the state’s uninsured total of 3.94 million — could have been moved to Medicaid under healthcare reform.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.