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Gov. Scott Says Fla. Won’t Comply with Health Care Law
The governor announced Friday night the state would not expand the Medicaid program to lower number of uninsured residents
Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we’re not going to implement exchanges,” Scott’s spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.
Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it’s unclear how he arrived at that figure.
Scott said the state will not expand the Medicaid program in order to lower the number of uninsured residents, nor will Florida set up a state-run health exchange, a marketplace where people who need insurance policies could shop for them.
“We care about having a health care safety net for the vulnerable Floridians, but this is an expansion that just doesn’t make any sense,” he told Fox host Greta Van Susteren.
Scott has gone back and forth on the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Congress cannot withhold federal Medicaid funding from states that opt out of a requirement in the overhaul to expand coverage to those just above the poverty line.
On the day of the ruling Scott was cautious about the expansion, saying he wanted to read the ruling first. Then during an interview Friday morning on a Jacksonville radio station, Scott said it was unlikely he would go along with the expansion because of the potential cost to the state.
But the governor told the Tampa Bay Times later in the day that he was still evaluating the ruling and would come up with a plan within a few weeks.
Racist
July 2nd, 2012
This is the part that’s making me sick(est). I keep hearing about governors implementing obamacare or not. I’m not sure how it will work, but if it’s up to the governor…NC is screwed! Even with the first Republican controlled congress in 100 yrs! Lying Commie Slimeball Bev Perdue knows she ain’t coming back, which means she is doing everything in her power to sodomize us with a baseball bat! If she can get us on the hook and chained to this anchor, you can bet your sweet ass she will do it!!!
Troy
July 2nd, 2012
I live here in the Sunshine state.
We have Scott, Rubio, and no state income tax!
I would pull for a presidential ticket of Scott/Rubio but I wouldn’t want to lose these guys to the place where dreams go to die.
skh.pcola
July 2nd, 2012
I’m in FL also. I predict the following:
1) No exchanges = insurance unavailable for uninsured citizens, or, at least, affordable insurance (read: subsidized) through the theoretical exchanges.
2) That triggers the tax.
3) The uninsured clamor for politicians to “do something.”
4) Instead of moving to scrap the piece of shit that is ObamaCare, the demand is single-payer, government-provided healthcare for everybody, which is the goal of Ozero and his Marxist cabal anyway.
We must demand–and enforce via voting–that the bill be repealed in its entirety.
Billy Fuster
July 2nd, 2012
It’s time for full-blown secessionist movements.