Deveined gulf shrimp and accidental Florida governor Rick Scott is the first state executive to officially turn down the additional Medicaid funds made available through Obamacare.
You may know Rick Scott as a Medicaid defrauder, who was elected governor because the tea party got everybody good n' riled up over politicians (n., someone who has served in office and therefore has a modicum of experience either legislating or governing) and Rick Scott was not a politician because instead of serving in office he spent his time in the private sector defrauding Medicaid. Since getting elected, he has tried to make people take drug tests for welfare, and is actively working on disenfranchising as many Floridian voters as possible. He did get his state's unemployment rate down closer to the national average than Nevada, so we'll give him that.
Floridians would actually vote for a figment of their own imagination rather than reelect Scott, perhaps because he would rather let his constituents die of preventable illnesses for the sin of being poor than take federal money that, in reducing coverage costs over all, would actually make health care more solvent.
Currently, Medicaid is available to those who make below 37% of the poverty level. The Affordable Care Act raises that threshold to 133% of the poverty level, and advances states 93% of the costs. Under the initial bill, states had to accept this extra money, or they would lose all Medicaid funding, but that was the only portion of the ACA struck down by the Supreme Court last week. Via Andrew Koppleman at Salon:
The Scalia group suggested that a federal program becomes unconstitutional just by being big. These are extraordinary, nonsensical new rules that only make sense in light of a background assumption that government must be restrained by any means necessary.
They'll get their wish. While Obamacare compels individuals and businesses who can afford to do so to buy insurance, it counted on generous government subsidies, partially in the form of Medicaid, to help insure those who could not afford insurance on their own. With states refusing this money, all those people not currently eligible for Medicaid, but unable to afford insurance under the mandate, will not be covered. This leaves a huge swath of lower income families vulnerable, for absolutely no reason except that Scott and the other conservative governors have ideoligical axes to grind.
Scott has yet to implement a single aspect of Obamacare, and has said he'll comply with the law if the Supreme Court upheld it and it wasn't repealed. Only one of those is an actual deadline, though: Congress could repeal the bill at any point between now and the end of time. In the meantime, Florida will be without the following:
Scott's administration has turned away grants applied for under Gov. Charlie Crist, such as $2 million for Medicare outreach, $500,000 for an elder affairs counseling and assistance program, $1 million to help consumers monitor health care premiums in the state and $1 million to plan a health care exchange, according to the Governor's Office. Then it turned away larger sums, such as the first installment of more than $30 million to help keep disabled seniors out of nursing homes. Just how much has it turned away? The Governor's Office doesn't keep a tally, spokesman Lane Wright said.
Stay healthy, Florida. You don't have any other option.
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