A 2010 state-by-state study by the Urban Institute and financed by the Kaiser Family Foundation projected that the Affordable Care Act would provide $20 billion in federal funds to Florida between 2014 and 2019 to expand Medicaid coverage to 951,622 new enrollees, including 683,477 that had been previously uninsured. Over those same five years, Florida would need to come up with $1.2 billion to fund the expanded coverage, according to the 2010 study. An updated analysis from the Urban Institute last week made no funding estimates but, using different assumptions, estimated that as many as 1.8 million uninsured Floridians — 45 percent of the state’s uninsured total of 3.94 million — could have been moved to Medicaid under healthcare reform. The new analysis was based on Census data of uninsured people below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, the cut-off point for Medicaid coverage under the reform act. On Friday night, the governor estimated on Fox News that expanding Medicaid will cost the state about $1.9 billion a year, Associated Press reported, but Scott didn’t say how he had arrived at that figure. A couple million people/families will be eligible for care under the new law in 2014--families of four earning up to $88,000 are eligible for the subsidies--will be denied the chance to buy coverage at subsidized rates because Scott has refused this money. Read more here. 

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