What's It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida!

[TruthOut10]

The really desperate come early. George Bishop, 61, a lanky, gray-haired cabinet builder in a tropical shirt, has a red, swollen nose from a boil caused by his third sinus infection in the past five months. Diana Rios, 54, cheerful despite the arthritis pain in her back and knees, holds on tight to her purse and to her seven-year-old granddaughter and translator, Sofia. Lindsay Oliver, 28, is here because of hypothyroidism, Sjögren's syndrome (an autoimmune disorder), anemia, chronic hives—and no insurance.

By 4 p.m. on a rainy winter afternoon, they are part of a small crowd assembled on a grassy field behind a chain-link fence outside the Palmer Feed Store in Orlando, Florida. Across the street is the county medical building, where volunteer doctors affiliated with the nonprofit group Shepherd's Hope see uninsured patients on weekday nights. The clinic doesn't start until 6, but it's a first-come, first-served operation, and demand is high.

At 4:30, a security guard opens the doors to let the patients in out of the drizzle. Dozens of them soon fill rows of metal chairs in the lobby. They are anxious and ailing, but also chatty as they munch on the cookies offered up by the volunteer clinic manager. Many have multiple medical issues going wholly or partly untreated. Rios is here for "private" problems as well as back pain, arthritis in her knees, and bursitis in her shoulder that forced her to quit working in September when she could no longer lift the trays she helped prepare for an airline food company. As Sofia translates, Rios explains that she has been in Florida for 16 years but has never had health insurance. She ended up in the emergency room recently after she fell on her arm and was so immobilized that she couldn't brush her teeth.

The raven-haired Oliver lost her job as a bank teller supervisor in July, leaving her and her three-year-old son uninsured. After months of unsuccessful job hunting, she finally signed on as a housekeeper at a Disney hotel. She's gone without some of her expensive medications since August and is hoping the clinic can help.

Oliver, Bishop, and Rios are among the nearly 4 million Floridians who lack health insurance—more than 1 in 5 in a state with the second-highest rate of uninsured in the country. Obamacare is supposed to help fix that through a combination of new federal subsidies for private insurance as well as a generous expansion of Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and disabled.

What's It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida! | Mother Jones

 

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Before he was Florida's governor, Rick Scott sank $5 million of his own fortune into trying to kill President Barack Obama's health care reform agenda. On Wednesday, Scott, a Republican, completed a major turnaround when he announced his state would take part in a key element of Obama's plan to enroll more poor people in Medicaid.

Florida will expand its Medicaid program to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $15,282 for a single person this year, Scott said Wednesday afternoon during a news conference in Tallahassee. Scott is now the seventh Republican governor to back the Medicaid expansion made possible by Obamacare. In addition to Florida, 22 states and the District of Columbia plan to broaden Medicaid.

"I want every Floridian to have access to high-quality health care they can afford," Scott said.

The governor proposes Florida expand Medicaid under Obama's health care reform law for at least the next three years, when the federal government will pay the full cost of enrolling newly eligible people. "While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost of new people in Medicaid, I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care," Scott said.

Under the health care reform law, the federal government covers all the expenses for insuring newly eligible people from 2014 through 2016. That share declines over several years until it reaches 90 percent in 2022 and beyond. Nevertheless, 13 Republican governors already have rejected the Medicaid expansion. Many of those governors are Scott's neighbors in southern states from North Carolina to Texas.

Rick Scott Agrees To Expand Medicaid Program In Florida