AARP Eye Center
Medicaid Flip-Flop in Florida: Will Other GOP Governors Follow?
By Tamara Lytle, February 21, 2013 04:39 PM
Rick Scott took the money but now pays a price.
Florida's small-government Republican governor ran against President Obama's health care reform. And he sued to thwart the law that expands Medicaid to uninsured low-income people.
But this week, he decided the billions of dollars in aid to cover 1 million Floridians was too much to pass up.
His decision to become the seventh GOP governor to take the federal aid has enraged his conservative base. And other Republican governors are watching closely.
On the conservative blog Red State, Eric Erickson minced no words in his post titled "I Am Very Disappointed in Governor Rick Scott." He accused Scott of selling out his principles in the name of getting reelected.
Other GOP governors - Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Rick Perry of Texas - have been as vehement about not accepting the Medicaid expansion as Scott was before this week. Pressure is mounting on the holdouts to stand their ground. In Texas, where a quarter of the population is uninsured, Perry's office says he's sticking to his guns, the Texas Tribune reports.
Then again, that's what Scott's office was saying until recently.