‘Pro-life’ Florida refuses to provide health insurance to needy kids
December 20, 2024
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State health officials were the tip of the spear in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign to defeat an abortion-rights expansion on the November ballot — cementing Florida’s pro-life bona fides — but beneath the sloganeering is a remarkable flippancy about the actual welfare of children. Not for the first time, Florida officials this fall have thumbed their noses at the federal government’s efforts to provide health insurance to children of working-class families.
Earlier this month, DeSantis officials in the Agency for Health Care Administration rejected a federal approval that would have allowed the state to expand eligibility for its version of the children’s health insurance program, commonly known as CHIP — an expansion the federal government estimated would cover roughly 42,000 additional kids. This is coverage for families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to otherwise buy private insurance: It’s for kids, in other words, who might fall through the cracks. It’s no great surprise then Florida’s version of this program, KidCare, has been backed with broad and bipartisan support for years.
But Florida turned down the federal government’s offer because of a dispute over how easy it should be to kick kids off this badly needed program. Earlier this year, Florida health officials and Attorney General Ashley Moody sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in an effort to block federal guidance that prevents state officials from kicking kids off the children’s health insurance program if their families miss a premium payment during a protected 12-month coverage period. The state lost that fight but appealed, which is ongoing.
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In rejecting the recent approval, the state Agency for Health Care Administration accused its federal counterpart of playing politics and refusing to show “deference” to the incoming Donald Trump administration — the implication being that a Trump White House would indeed allow states like Florida to more easily rip health insurance away from working-class families. That certainly wasn’t a position Trump, a so-called populist, campaigned on, so it’s curious Florida officials seem to so firmly believe his White House will back them.
Pro-life Florida’s demand that it be allowed to punish children for the sins of their parents is remarkable.
There is no requirement that Florida charge a premium in the first place, and in court documents the state has said it collects a measly $30 million in payments, no impressive sum in a state budget that comes in around $117 billion. Still, Moody’s office dubiously claimed this money “enables (the state) to meet the balanced budget requirement of the Florida Constitution.”
State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the House Democratic leader, called the state’s policy on missed premium payments “unjustifiable and callous.” State data show Florida has booted about 5,000 kids per month off KidCare, the state’s CHIP program, for non-payment of premiums since the federal coverage requirement began last January, Driskell wrote in a letter to the DeSantis administration last week.
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“Our tax dollars are better spent providing children health care rather than litigating in order to deny it,” she wrote.
It should be intuitive to understand why the state’s position on premium payments is needlessly cruel: Families that qualify for KidCare are families that are by definition vulnerable to unexpected costs — a car problem, higher-than-expected electric bills, rising rent.
This is where the work of public service actually matters: This court fight is not an academic exercise. It shouldn’t be about a principled stand for originalism or textualism, or a tryout for an appointment in the Trump administration. There are actual families with actual children — tens of thousands — who need this program and can’t get it because of a stubborn state bureaucracy obsessed with its own obscure priorities.
DeSantis poured millions of taxpayer dollars into his campaign to preserve Florida’s near-total abortion ban. His administration deployed police powers against organizers who sought to overturn it and threatened prosecution against TV executives who aired third-party advertisements criticizing it. It was an embarrassing and legally dubious use of his office, and one he’d presumably justify by his grave seriousness about the lives of unborn children. It’s a bit incongruous, then, for his administration to take a decidedly more pro-death approach to children once they’ve emerged from the womb.
Nate Monroe is a Florida columnist for the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU. Email him at [email protected].
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