“You might be physically better off not to have insurance than Medicaid.”
Those were the words out of Chris Sprowls mouth yesterday during a Suncoast Tiger Bay luncheon in St. Pete. His opponent, Carl Zimmerman, isn’t wasting the golden nugget plopped right in his lap for a second.
“Itโs an outrage that Chris Sprowls believes Floridians would be better off without any health insurance than to have Medicaid,” Zimmerman wrote in a statement.ย
What Zimmerman’s statement doesn’t say is that Sprowls almost instantly realized what he said wasn’t going to look so good to voters and followed it up with, “I don’t know if I believe that.”
After-the-fact qualifiers aside, this could be the “if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance” gaffe of the north Pinellas District 65 race.
Florida is home to almost 1 million people who would have qualified for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, but now don’t because the Republican-controlled legislature turned down federal funding to expand the program.
Worse for that group, because of the way insurance exchanges work based on the healthcare law, those individuals who earn less than the federal poverty level don’t qualify for a subsidy on private insurance. That means someone earning $11,670 a year or less would have to pay more for their health insurance than someone making as much as $45,960.
“I suspect that the 3.2 million Floridians โ including thousands of seniors, mothers, fathers and children in Pinellas โ who rely on Medicaid to provide health care would strongly disagree [with Sprowls],” Zimmerman’s statement continued. “I know from years of experience as a teacher and community member that Medicaid can mean the difference between taking a sick child to the doctor or โwaiting to seeโ. Itโs the difference between families just scraping by, or filing for bankruptcy from medical bills. It can be the difference between life and death”
Zimmerman and other Tallahassee Democrats fought a hard battle during the last legislative session to compromise and accept funds, but to no avail. Many supporters of Medicaid expansion called on a special session to re-visit the issue and are still holding out hope something will be done. Left on the table is a shrinking pot filled with $51 billion in federal dollars.
Zimmerman also took a bit of a shot at his opponent based on an illness Sprowls had as a child. He survived Hodgkins disease in high school.
“The fact that my opponent has faced a serious illness โ as I have โ makes this statement all the more shocking in its lack of compassion and complete lack of understanding of our health care system,” said Zimmermann
“This is a stark contrast between how my opponent and I would work for Florida families: I’ve been fighting to expand access to affordable care while Chris Sprowls would like to limit the options Floridians have for their health care.โ
