by Bobby Mermer, PhD, Alachua County Labor Coalition Coordinator
It hasn’t been a great year for healthcare justice in the United States or direct democracy in Florida.
But don’t despair. We can continue making progress in the fight for affordable and equitable healthcare even in the current political climate. We can stand up to bullies in Tallahassee who want to take away your right to amend your state constitution. But we will only be successful if you join the fight to (finally) expand Medicaid to low-income adults and families under the Affordable Care Act!
If successful, Florida individuals and families with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level will finally receive affordable health coverage.
As of this article’s writing, Congress is moving Trump’s budget forward, instilling a fresh sense of dread over the seeming unraveling of our social safety net. And you may be aware, their largest target is Medicaid. The current proposal calls for imposing cruel work requirements on Medicaid recipients, which do nothing to help anybody enter the workforce. Instead, these requirements withhold care to families through a combination of erecting paperwork barriers, preventing people from getting healthy enough to go back to work, or denying benefits to people to whom sufficient work hours are unavailable. The proposal also calls for reducing the money states receive to provide coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion program.
Under these conditions, it’s understandable to want to go into defense mode—and you should do whatever possible to pressure Congress to stop these cruel policies. But it’s important to remember that a future Congress and President can easily restore full Medicaid funding and reverse cruel work requirements in a future budget. In other words, even though Congress passed Trump’s Big Ugly Bill with Medicaid cuts intact, the setback will be temporary.
At the state level, our Legislature passed and DeSantis signed HB 1205—which aims to de facto abolish direct democracy in Florida. It does so by placing costly and confusing requirements and restrictions on the citizens initiative process of amending our state constitution.
While we are confident the people of Florida are resilient enough to overcome the new requirements and restrictions, there’s no denying we have our work cut out for us. Volunteers will no longer be able to collect completed petitions without first registering as a circulator with the state. Petitions collected by circulators must now arrive at the voter’s Supervisor of Elections office within ten days after being signed. Various campaign-related fines have gone up. Only citizens with Florida residency and no prior felony convictions can collect forms. The list goes on.
Florida voters have used the initiative process to amend our constitution to ensure all workers receive a living wage, legalize medical marijuana, restore returning citizens’ voting rights, and more. But now we’re at a critical juncture thanks to HB 1205. We can let the bullies win and take the offramp. Or we can speed up and leave the bullies in the rearview mirror. The Alachua County Labor Coalition, National Women’s Liberation, the League of Women Voters, and the Unitarians worked to collect as many signed petitions as possible ahead of the new law going into effect. As of this writing, the latest round of lawsuits seeking injunctions against part of the law are still pending. But our coalition will keep moving forward regardless of the Courts’ decisions! We are shifting gears from collecting completed petitions to distributing blank petitions, checking completed forms for errors, and providing free shipping to signers to submit them.
We hope you will join us as we move forward to secure Medicaid Expansion and help keep direct democracy alive in Florida. Email info@laborcoalition.org or nwl@womensliberation.org to sign up as a Medicaid Expansion volunteer. Training and petition distribution opportunities will be provided.