POLITICS

Florida lawmakers play role in sinking GOP's health care bill

Ledyard King
USA TODAY-FLORIDA

WASHINGTON – A small but steadfast group of Florida Republicans helped scuttle their party’s health care reform proposal.

The quintet — hard-line conservative Reps. Bill Posey, Daniel Webster, Ron DeSantis and Ted Yoho and moderate Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — were expected to vote Friday against a bill backed by Republican leaders. The legislation would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with one giving states more Medicaid flexibility, but it would have dropped millions from insurance rolls.

READ MORE: Republicans give up on 'Obamacare' repeal bill, move on to other issues

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan decided to pull the bill before the vote that had been scheduled for Friday afternoon when he realized at least 30 Republicans would oppose it and send it to defeat.

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“We came really close today, but we came up short,” Ryan told reporters.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, a conservative who was planning to support the measure despite the flaws he saw in it, fumed about the decision to pull the bill.

“People who are too afraid to vote shouldn’t run for Congress,” he said. “We should have had a chance to vote to repeal Obamacare. We made a promise, and the American people deserved to know who was ready to keep that promise and who wasn’t.”

Conservative opponents thought the replacement for the Affordable Care Act kept too many elements of that law and didn’t do enough to make heath care affordable.

Moderates feared the bill would strip health insurance from too many of their constituents.

READ MORE: What the GOP's bill could mean for 'essential health benefits'

“The bill did not repeal Obamacare, and it did not lower premiums,” Posey, R-Rockledge, said through a spokesman. “To secure my support, it had to do at least one of those two things.”

Republicans in Congress from Florida and across America campaigned on a mantra to repeal and replace Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement as president.

But no Democrats were expected to support the GOP's plan, despite their acknowledgment that Obama's Affordable Care Act, which has helped lower Florida's uninsured rate from 25 percent to 16 percent, still needs reform.

“It’s not the fix I came up here to do, which is to lower premiums and make (health care) more accessible to all people,” Rep. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said Friday about the Republicans' bill. “This doesn’t do that. They put more of the burden on seniors instead of the wealthy. It’s just not going to fly.”

The Republican bill was crafted to provide a more market-based system that would offer consumers more choice, give states more flexibility and loosen the federal government's grip on health care. Reducing Medicaid funding and providing governors more say in tailoring programs to constituents’ needs was something that Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has long championed.

But about 24 million Americans, including an estimated 1.8 million Floridians, were projected to lose insurance over the next decade because of the GOP's proposed changes.

And there were studies indicating the bill would raise costs significantly for people ages 50 to 64 to compensate for the incentives that younger customers would get to buy insurance.

This “age tax” by itself would raise premiums in Florida by $1,922 annually for a 60-year-old, according to the Community Catalyst, a health care advocacy group that supports Obama's Affordable Care Act.

READ MORE: Why Republicans can't put everything they want in their health care bill

Republicans in Congress have criticized the ACA’s requirement that people buy health insurance or face a financial penalty. They have called it a federal overreach and cited the exodus of insurers from many markets as proof the law is coming apart.

Almost half of Florida’s 67 counties now have only one insurer offering exchange plans for the 1.7 million Floridians who have signed up for coverage statewide.

“Obamacare has proven to be a failed and unsustainable social experiment,” Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Naples, said Friday.

Rep. Brian Mast, an Afghanistan War veteran who lost both of his legs, tried to sway reluctant Republicans in a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday about the importance of sticking together to pass the bill. His passionate speech reportedly left some lawmakers emotional.

It turned out to not be enough, but the Palm City Republican said Friday he is optimistic that health care reform is not dead.

“Our broken health care system will not be fixed overnight,” Mast said in a statement.

“The only way we can fix the failures of Obamacare is through a fully transparent process that engages voices all across the country," he said.

"Moving forward, I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in working to improve our nation’s health care system to ensure that everyone has the liberty to choose the health care that is best for their life.”

Contact Ledyard King at lking@gannett.com; Twitter: @ledgeking