Repeating his opposition to Medicaid expansion, House Speaker Will Weatherford told a South Florida television station that lawmakers should not call a special session to resolve the issue.
“I think it’d be a big mistake to call a special session,” Weatherford said in a discussion on “Facing South Florida” with Jim DeFede on WFOR. “We don’t have an agreement on where we want to go.”
“At the end of the day,” Weatherford said, “this is a federal government bait-and-switch situation. They want to dangle money in front of us, get us to take it, and then three or four years from now, and expect us to pay for it.”
Earlier this year, Gov. Rick Scott switched his starting position; now he is backing Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Senate Republicans pushed back against the proposed expansion; they moved forward with an option to obtain billions in federal funds for enrolling low-income residents in private health-insurance plans.
However, both proposals died in the House, which instead came up with a limited proposition that Weatherford says was a free-market approach. Democrats have called on Scott to call a special legislative session to deal with the issue, but the governor has not yet called legislators back.
