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As a frontline physician, I see with my own eyes how COVID-19 is hurting families across Florida. More than 26,000 Floridians have died from the new coronavirus and nearly 1 million more have been sickened. Businesses are struggling. More than 500,000 Floridians have lost their jobs. All this devastation happened in eight short months.
People are in pain. They are suffering and many are scared about the future.
What worries me, as a doctor, is how people will struggle to care for themselves and their families in the weeks and months ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t just sickened Floridians. It has also forced many people to lose their employer-provided healthcare.
The time has truly come to stand up for all Floridians and ensure those who need help the most have the security and safety of healthcare.
That’s why we must expand access to affordable healthcare in Florida, which is one of 12 states that have not expanded healthcare to our working families.
Florida has one of the nation’s highest rates of people without health insurance, at 13.1 percent. By expanding Medicaid, we can help 1 million Floridians get healthcare.
They are patients who had their hours cut because of COVID-19, so they earn too much for traditional Medicaid but not enough to afford decent health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange. They are people who lost their jobs and for any number of reasons, can’t get health coverage. And worse, they are the people who delay care and treatment because they are worried about big medical bills. So they wait, they put off going to the doctor, until they are in serious trouble.
Many of us know people like this. Hardworking Floridians who have played by the rules, but sadly, are falling through the cracks in the middle of a global pandemic that is killing more than 1,000 Americans every day.
Because politicians are actively sabotaging Americans’ healthcare, from preventing outreach programs to ending financial support for low-income families, millions of Americans have lost their healthcare since 2017, and many more are under-insured, paying more money for less healthcare.
Politicians have shown little interest in helping our fellow Floridians who have no healthcare, yet are essential to our economy. More than 63 percent of all people on Medicaid are working individuals. They work in our restaurants, construction and our grocery stores. In normal times, they are the backbone of our economy. In a pandemic, they are the ones we need to be healthy and protected for all our sakes. So it’s more important than ever that Floridians make their support for expanding access to healthcare known by contacting their representatives and senators.
Expanding Medicaid protects people and saves Florida money. By refusing to expand Medicaid, Florida is walking away from more than $65 billion that we can use for critical services that we all use, such as roads and schools. At the same time, expanding Medicaid means small hospitals that don’t get paid when they treat uninsured patients in their emergency departments can now get reimbursed. This can help protect small rural community hospitals across our state and ensure people have access to care.
During a deadly pandemic, Floridians need more healthcare, not less.
By expanding access to healthcare in Florida, we can protect more than 1 million Floridians, support our hospitals, and build a better, stronger Florida that can continue to provide opportunity and prosperity.
Dr. Andrew Rivera is a local otolaryngologist based in Miami and a member of the Committee to Protect Medicare.
