What is the price of a human life?
In Florida, that means $17.60. That is the annual cost for each of the 2.5 million Floridians who cannot afford health insurance.
Of course, the total comes to $4.4 billion, which is a hefty total.
On the other hand, the state can afford to give big tax breaks to corporations, all in the name of economic development. That development comes on the backs of workers who cannot afford health insurance because they make too much money to qualify for the state’s Medicaid program.
They could be covered if the state—meaning Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Republican fellow travelers in the Legislature—expanded Medicaid.
But, according to Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, “I could be sitting at home as a
40-year-old, living with my parents playing Xbox and I should be able to knock on your door and say, ‘pay my health insurance because health care is a right,’” as reported in The Ledger of Lakeland, FL.
And that could happen. But it is an old Republican tactic of refusing to help people based on the potential abuse of a tiny fraction of the people who would benefit. The vast majority of people who would benefit are workers vital to the state’s tourism industry but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid as it is now structured but cannot afford health insurance, even under the Affordable Care Act, or Obama Care.
The Palm Coast Republican says Florida took the right approach by expanding income limits for families to qualify for Florida KidCare subsidized health insurance, as reported in The Ledger. We’ll protect the children but let the parents get sick and maybe die. Or perhaps they will become so poor as to fall into the income level needed to qualify for Medicaid.
I suspect that Florida’s refusal to expand Medicaid under the federal government’s program has more to do with politics than it does with anything else. The Republicans opposed it under President Obama, coming within a cat’s whisker of repealing it—the attempt failed in the U.S. Senate when the late John McCain refused to go along with his fellow Republicans.
Florida rejected that expansion under then-Governor and current U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, and now DeSantis, et al.
Apparently, winning in politics is more important than human life.
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