Power

Rick Scott: 1.6 Million Floridians Losing Health Care Is a ‘Federal Problem’

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he would take no action if the Affordable Care Act is gutted as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that could cut off access to affordable health care for millions looms.

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he would take no action if the Affordable Care Act is gutted as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that could cut off access to affordable health care for millions looms. Shutterstock

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he would take no action if the U.S. Supreme Court guts the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—a decision that would cut off access to affordable health care for millions.

Under the ACA, states have the option to set up and manage their own insurance marketplaces—websites through which consumers can purchase their health insurance. To date, 14 states have opted to do so; 27 others have decided not to create their own marketplace, leaving consumers to use HealthCare.gov for insurance purchases.

The remaining nine states and Washington, D.C., have a marketplace that is managed by both federal and state governments, and six states that at first rejected President Obama’s signature domestic policy are now reportedly considering ways to maintain subsidies for their constituents if the Roberts Court rules against the ACA.

Both states with and without their own marketplaces offer public subsidies to the millions of Americans with incomes below a certain level, to help them meet the cost of their private insurance.

But that aid could end as early as this summer. In November, the Supreme Court agreed to take up King v. Burwell, which centers on whether states without state-run exchanges can be mandated to offer subsidies in health plans.

At the National Governors Association meeting this past weekend, Politico asked more than a dozen governors, including Scott, about their plans in the event that the Roberts Court rules against the Obama administration and the ACA.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a conservative Republican, said the potential of an abrupt stop to the subsidies is Washington’s doing. It’s not his job to find a solution.

“This is a federal program, it’s a federal problem,” he said at the American Action Forum on Friday.

Florida has 1.6 million people enrolled in ACA plans, more than any other state in the country, with nine in ten receiving subsidies.

The federal government, under the ACA, pays 100 percent of the costs for expanding Medicaid coverage for three years. States then pay a small percentage in the fourth year, and 10 percent of the Medicaid expansion cost by 2020.

Other Republican governors, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, both potential 2016 presidential contenders, have showed less indifference to the fate of their residents’ access to health insurance. Kasich told Bloomberg reporters last week that “if [the Court] threw half a million people [off] insurance, we’d have to look at it.”

“If the Court makes a decision that these exchanges get shut down, then we’re gonna have to figure something out in Ohio,” Kasich continued.

“No matter what you believe about Obamacare, if that were to happen there needs to be a reasonable bridge,” Walker told Politico. “We’re going to talk about it, we’re going to advocate for it.”

Scott, a former hospital executive whose company paid more than $600 million in fines for defrauding Medicare, has been from the beginning an outspoken opponent of Obama’s health-care reform law. Though he recently came out in support of Medicaid expansion, his position has been regarded as mostly nominal, and expansion faces significant opposition in Florida’s Republican-dominated state legislature.