To: The Florida State House, The Florida State Senate, and Governor Ron DeSantis

Expand Medicaid in Florida

Many people in Florida can not afford medical insurance and are frozen out of the exchanges. This is a must on a humanitarian and fiscal level.

Why is this important?

Last session the Florida Senate proposed a solution to take the federal money. While not the best it did attempt to help our population. The house refused to do anything. The Governor gave a half-hearted endorsement and nothing was accomplished. The reason the house gave was that they didn't trust the government to pay its bills and medicaid has many flaws. Both of these reasons are ridiculous. The Federal government has always paid its bills and the state has a large say in how medicaid is done. So if there are problems with the program, the very people who are complaining are the ones who should be fixing it.

Florida has the third highest number of people who die prematurely each year because they are without health insurance, according to a Families USA study.

The nonprofit, created to get all Americans quality, affordable healthcare, found that 2,272 people ages 25 to 64 died in Florida in 2010 because they did not have health insurance to pay for medical costs.

Also we gave up 50 Billion dollars that will go to other states and the payments to hospitals for caring for people without insurance will be cut drastically. This will cause a huge strain on our hospitals since they are required by law to care for the poor.