by Scott Darius, Florida Voices for Health
Contributor’s note from Jason Bellamy-Fults and the North Central Florida Central Labor Council: At this summer’s AFL-CIO convention, presenters from this campaign spoke to union members from across Florida. In the coming months, we hope to work with the FL Voices for Health and others who are leading this campaign to get more union households involved. Until everyone is covered!
As Gainesville residents we live in the shadow of some of the best hospitals in the world, and yet, a short drive from those doors, there are people struggling to access health care.
I work with Florida Voices for Health, and our job is to listen to Floridians who are living with the consequences of a broken system. Some of the hardest stories we hear come from people in what we call the coverage gap.
In Florida, the most a single parent with two kids can earn and still qualify for Medicaid in Florida is about $8,000 a year. If you’re a single adult, you don’t qualify no matter how little you make. Roughly half a million Floridians find themselves earning too much to qualify for Medicaid, but also too little to qualify for tax credits in the ACA Marketplace. This means they have no options for regular care.
One of them is Debbie, a full-time caregiver from Pensacola. She takes care of her 23-year-old son, who has Down syndrome and autism. When he aged out, she lost her own Medicaid coverage. Hurricane Michael had already wrecked their home and the van that carries her son. Debbie now pays out of pocket for her medications and can’t get the specialty care she needs. Her choices are a $700-a-month premium or no coverage at all.
“Without Medicaid expansion,” Debbie told us, “I have no way of accessing health care so that I can properly care for my disabled son. How is this humane?”
I’ve never had a good answer to that question. But I know how we fix it.
We’ve waited long enough.
For a decade, the Florida Legislature has had the chance to expand Medicaid. It would save our state an estimated $200 million a year, bring billions in federal dollars home, and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Florida is one of the last handful of states that hasn’t done it, which means our federal tax dollars are already paying for other states’ expansion.
Our coalition has since decided that if Tallahassee won’t act, we’ll take the question directly to the people. The Florida Decides Healthcare ballot initiative would let Floridians vote to close the coverage gap on the 2028 general election ballot.
The initiative can only make the ballot if about 890,000 registered Florida voters sign petition. That means people, not politicians, have to make it happen. Despite the legislature’s recent attempts to make this process even harder, our campaign has pioneered an innovative, easy, and less expensive way to make the will of the people the law of the land – our digital petition request system.
So here are two asks, and both take about two minutes.
Ask #1: Request your own petition.
Go to www.medicaidflorida.org and request a petition for yourself. Your petition and a couple of extras will be mailed to you with a prepaid return envelope. Share the petition with others in your circle, sign it, fill it out, and return it. This is the single most valuable thing you can do, because every valid signature moves us closer to the ballot.
Ask #2: Take the 10-and-10 challenge.
Send that same link to ten people you know: friends, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, your group chat, your book club, the people you play pickleball with. Then ask each of them to do two things: request their own petition and send the link to ten people of their own.
Do the math. You message ten people. If each of them messages ten, that’s a hundred. Another round makes a thousand. Three rounds of a text message is a thousand Floridians with a petition in hand, and you started it from your couch. Organizing doesn’t always feature a big rally or a viral moment. It comes down to one person telling another, “Hey, this matters to me, and I need your help.”
Those of us who care about health care are often working on fixing different ends of this broken system: insulin prices, Medicaid, advancing single payer, and all the things in between. Opponents of change count on us being so focused on our own piece that we never come together. But I believe the opposite is true. Everyone we bring into one of these fights is someone who can join the larger movement for a health system that works for people. Medicaid expansion is concrete, winnable, and ready for us to take on right now.
Debbie is waiting. So are hundreds of thousands of others whose names we’ll never know, and some of them live right here in Alachua County. So please, take out your phone right now and go to www.medicaidflorida.org. Request your petition. Then send the link to ten people, and challenge them to do the same.
Ten people. Two minutes. Let’s go.
To learn more about Florida Voices for Health, visit healthyfla.org.