Repeal Obamacare? Bleak outlook for Florida
The problem with repealing Obamacare why Florida should worry
Florida played a large role in pushing President-elect Donald Trump to victory.
If the reality show host-turned-leader of the free world makes good on his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it's also the Sunshine State that stands to lose the most.
More people from Florida than from any other state signed up for the federal health coverage last year.
The people hired to walk others through the sign-up process — they're called "navigators," which is appropriate considering how complicated the process can be — are as busy as ever as the first deadline approaches Thursday for coverage to begin Jan. 1. (People can still sign up until Jan. 31, though their coverage wouldn't start until later.)
It stands to reason that even if Trump is successful in repealing Obamacare, coverage wouldn't end until at least 2018.
What will the 1.7 million people in Florida who had coverage under the federal exchange this year do if the plan eventually goes away?
No one knows.
"I had a lady who came in Saturday, and she was in tears before we even started the session," said Anne Packham, marketplace project director for Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties. "She said, 'I'm diabetic. I cannot live without this and I have three years before I'm old enough to qualify for Medicare.'"
I stopped into the Arab American Community Center of Florida on LB McLeod Road in southwest Orlando, one of about 30 places in Central Florida where navigators are helping people sign up.
Two navigators juggled back-to-back appointments on a recent afternoon.
A couple from Kissimmee came to one of the sessions to re-enroll their family of four.
The husband received a significant promotion at work this year, pushing the family's income up to about $58,000, which also meant they qualified for less in subsidies, raising the cost of their monthly premium from $195 to $364.
After recovering from a case of sticker shock, they still signed up.
There's been plenty of discussion about how the costs of the coverage plans soared this year.
That is often one of the reasons Obamacare is labeled as a failure.
But navigators say that in cases where a family's income stayed the same, many who qualify for subsidies saw their premiums stay about the same.
"The cost is not going up for most of the people we're seeing who are getting the subsidies," Packham said.
Subsidies could cover some or even all of the cost of plans for individuals earning between about $11,800 and $47,500.
That is particularly significant in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature have refused to expand Medicaid to cover more people and a low-wage tourism economy dominates the landscape.
Since 2010, the rate of uninsured people in Florida dropped from 21.3 percent to 13.3 percent last year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which tracks how Obamacare has changed the number of uninsured people from state to state.
Even Trump has suggested he might keep some of the most popular parts of the law — such as a prohibition against insurers denying coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. But it's unclear how that would work without the mandate that people buy coverage. (That's the part he doesn't like.)
All the political haranguing over the law is a little tough for Cheryl Owen to stomach.
The Altamonte Springs grandmother, who works part-time as a restaurant cashier, knows the uncertainty that comes with being uninsured.
So the $25.50 monthly premium she qualifies for under the federal health law is a welcome line item in her budget next year.
"It takes the worry away," Owen, 48, told me. "When you have to go to the emergency room, it's no fun when you get the bill and it's in the thousands and you can't afford to pay it."
If the law went away, she said, it would be a "disaster."
"That would leave me hanging," she said.
Her and thousands of others in our state.
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