With health care at risk, Florida groups step up pressure on GOP Congress

• Around half of the 4.7 million Floridians who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace could lose coverage if enhanced premium tax credits expire.

• Businesses and advocacy groups are urging the Republican-controlled Congress to extend the credits, citing potential negative economic impacts.

• If the credits expire, some Floridians could see premium increases as high as 75%.

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With 2.2 million Floridians at risk of losing health coverage, concern is mounting among Florida organizations urging the Republican-controlled Congress to reinstate Obamacare tax credits set to expire at year’s end.

About 4.7 million Floridians receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, the most of any state in the nation. Close to half of them are able to have coverage because they pay lower costs with the tax credits now in place, experts say.

But if these enhanced premium tax credits go away, that cost will rise and many now covered are expected to drop health insurance.

Among them is Crystal Sexton of Lake City.

“If that goes away, I won’t be able to work,” Sexton said of the credits. “And if I’m unable to work, I’ll lose everything…” said Sexton, a custodian who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and whose private insurance costs are eased by the tax credit she gains because of her income level.

“They’re so beneficial to so many tax-paying Floridians,” she added.

Insurance costs will climb without credits

Analysis by KFF, the national health policy organization, found that proposed private insurance increases could run as high as 75% if the credits vanish.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that permanently extending the enhanced premium tax credits would cost $370 billion over the next 10 years. President Trump, who unsuccessfully pushed for repealing Obamacare for years, has expressed no support for extending the tax credits.

Still, politically red states, including Florida and Texas, have huge populations who have gained health coverage only with the credits.

Florida’s 20 Republican members of Congress, out of a 28-person state delegation, have been largely silent on the issue. But a variety of groups now are clamoring for Republicans to continue the credits, fearing a spike in uninsured Americans next year.

Florida Voices for Health, a community advocacy group, brought together on Aug. 25 some Floridians now benefiting from the tax credits.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, a coalition of business leaders, under the banner Florida Conservatives for Affordable Care, also called on Congress to renew the credits.

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Associated Industries of Florida, a prominent business lobby active in Republican politics, and the Florida Hospital Association were among the organizations warning that the state will suffer economically if millions of Floridians lose health coverage.

Florida businesses have been helped by having covered workforce

Valamere Mikler, an adjunct college instructor from Hollywood, relies on tax credits to gain health coverage. She gets no insurance from her employer, a situation common across Florida, and which has gotten the attention of businesses helped by having a workforce insured with support from the federal government.

Without federal assistance, Mikler says she couldn’t afford coverage. “I’d go back to skipping my medical visits and I couldn’t afford my prescriptions,” she said.

The enhanced premium tax credits, approved under legislation signed by President Biden, have helped drive both Florida’s and the nation’s number of uninsured to their lowest levels in decades.

While aimed at working families and those with lower- to middle-income, a family of four can still earn a credit if the cost of a benchmark health insurance plan tops 8.5% of the household's income.

A family of four earning $64,000 a year, now may pay $5,440 annually with the credits. But that could go up $2,571 without them, according to various analysts.

While a KFF poll earlier this summer showed that overwhelming majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents support extending the tax credits, when told the cost, GOP support fades.

Fewer than half, 42% of Republicans surveyed agreed that the extension was needed; but support among MAGA followers dropped from 56% to 35%, the survey found.

Source: John Kennedy Capital Bureau | USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA