Ron DeSantis loves to talk about his culture wars -- but not this

2.6M Floridians have no health insurance, more are about to lose coverage and he opposes the obvious policy response

Ron DeSantis has been in the news a lot lately, thanks to his crusade to protect what he calls the "free state of Florida" from a "woke" agenda infecting schools, colleges and the culture more generally.

These efforts deserve the attention they're getting. They are part of the most serious challenge to the rights revolution I've seen in a long time, maybe in my lifetime -- and they are coming at the hands of a governor who could very well become the next Republican presidential nominee.  That certainly seems to be his intention and a big part of why he's so eager to make headlines with these efforts.

But there's a whole other side to DeSantis as a governor -- one that has gotten a lot less attention, in part because he doesn't talk about it, despite its huge impact.  

I'm talking about his record on health care.  Florida has nearly 2.6 million residents without insurance, according to Census figures.  That works out to about 12% of the population, one of the highest rates in the country.  And it doesn't have to be that way.  If Florida took federal money available through the Affordable Care Act and expanded its Medicaid program, as most other states have done, both the number and percentage of Floridians without insurance would almost certainly plummet.

In other words, a bunch of Floridians who need health care would finally be able to get it.

That hasn't happened because Florida is among the states where Republican leaders have opposed expansion, in what you might call the GOP's last stand against "Obamacare." It’s a fight that grows out of principled opposition to government health care interventions, political opposition to anything associated with Obama, or both depending on which Republican you’re talking about

It’s also a fight that DeSantis happens to know well. He was in the U.S. House for the 2017 repeal effort -- voting with the extreme GOP caucus that actually rejected the first bill on the floor, because it didn't do enough to roll back the law's protections for pre-existing conditions.

As governor, DeSantis has opposed Medicaid expansion -- although, again, he doesn't like to talk about it.  The last major statement he made on the subject I could find was in 2021, via a spokesperson who gave a quote confirming DeSantis' position to the Washington Times. 

And it’s not like his office is forthcoming with information. I started working on this story in early January and emailed his communications director with questions three weeks ago.  I could not get a simple, straightforward answer on his position towards Medicaid -- or on any of my questions for that matter -- despite repeated follow ups, including a set of questions I sent at the beginning of this week.

Strange, yes, until you consider that health care has been a reliably strong issue for Democrats for several years.  And if you imagine a hypothetical presidential campaign in 2024 -- or 2028, if that’s when he ends up running -- then under virtually any scenario DeSantis will be running against a Democrat with a record of supporting major coverage increases at the federal or state level.  I.e., this is a contrast he might not be eager to draw.  

(I feel like we’re seeing something similar on abortion, where DeSantis has avoided making splashy, high-profile statements and his social media backers have too -- very much in contrast to the way that they are hyping, say, his efforts to change what’s taught in Florida public universities. Abortion rights, like health care, is an issue on which the Republican position appears to be extremely unpopular, alienating even some conservative voters.)

The lack of Medicaid expansion in Florida is in many ways an old story. But there's a new reason to pay attention. A federal pandemic-relief initiative that boosted Medicaid enrollment is about to expire; how many people lose coverage afterwards will depend a lot on how carefully states manage the initiative's "unwinding." There are already signs that the DeSantis administration -- which publicly called for ending the program early -- will rush through the process, potentially pushing up the number of uninsured by hundreds of thousands or maybe even more than a million.  Many of them will be children.

My new HuffPost article looks at the DeSantis record, focusing on what he has (and, mostly, has not) done about health care in Florida.  I also tried to capture the human impact of what it means to go without insurance, because whatever the political implications of his posture, it's having a profound impact on the lives of everyday people. Here’s the URL: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-desantis-medicaid-florida-uninsured_n_63d37fbde4b04d4d18e52a03

Thank you for reading!