Health Care, Florida | featured news

A Florida Senate committee voted Monday against expanding Medicaid to roughly 1 million of the state's poorest under the federal health overhaul and instead proposed a voucher plan that would require patients to pay premiums and co-pays.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a leading Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law, said he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people.

Republican governors like Rick Scott of Florida who say they will defy President Barack Obama and opt out of a planned expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor are setting up a fight with the health care providers in their own backyards.

As healthcare costs for the poor soar across the United States, perhaps no state will feel the loss of federal stimulus money more than Florida.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said he will not implement the federal health care overhaul after a judge in Florida struck down the law as unconstitutional.