Seven. Hours.
That's how long members of the State House debated a compromised proposal that would have drawn down billions in federal Medicaid dollars available throughout the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare, whatever) to cover low-income Floridians, the Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange. The bill was hewn from a drawn-out bipartisan effort to come up with a plan that would cover hundreds of thousands of currently uninsured Floridians.
In the end, the bill died by 33 votes, largely along party lines — an outcome that wasn't unexpected.
In the end, we wanted to cry, laugh and shout expletives at our laptops (we watched remotely in the comfort of our cubicle thanks to The Florida Channel; we had the ability to mouth our indignation at our Big Lebowski bobble heads, which was helpful).
Four Republicans voted in favor of the measure: Tampa area Rep. Shawn Harrison, Sarasota-area Rep. Ray Pilon, Orlando Rep. Rene Plasencia and Key Largo-area Rep. Holly Raschein.
The rest spouted rhetoric about the free market and federal/government handouts, mused about the role of government and even wondered aloud whether adults in good shape really need health insurance anyway.
Surprisingly, the term "bootstraps" was never uttered, at least that we heard.
Our favorite:
"I was born in a quonset hut," said Lakeland area Republican Neil Combee, who offered an anecdote about when he was a young buck mending a fence on a ranch in Polk County, and didn't need health insurance.
Then, one day, he got a tummyache.
“I got sick one day. I didn't know what it was. I was bad sick,” he actually said.
Since he didn't work at, like, a WalMart, his supervisor believed him and let him go home. He went to the doctor, then the hospital for an emergency appendectomy (for the record, we had a similar procedure when we were ten, and an invasive laparotomy, nearly died, glad it didn't happen to us in our twenties; we probably would have avoided the hospital for fear of debt and died, but ya know).
“Ten minutes and I was on the operating table,” he said. “I got there in the nick of time.”
Anyway, he couldn't afford to pay his entire bill, so the hospital offered him a payment plan. The same thing happened again soon after, when his wife gave birth to their son.
Combee and his colleagues did have a couple of valid points, though.
“We need to be talking about health care costs," Combee said. "That's where the discussion needs to be centered. If you want to be kind to the needy, vote for measures that make health care affordable.”
Point taken. Definitely true. But an anecdote from State Rep. Dwayne Taylor, a Daytona Beach Democrat who worked as an EMT, recounted the calls he got from people who avoided the hospital until it was too late (and probably would do so whether delivering a baby or getting one's appendix out cost $100 or $20,000; an insurance card is always better).
“Women who were pregnant who did not have any prenatal care would call 911 so that we would come out and deliver that baby so that they would not have any hospital costs,” he said.
Unbelievable, no?
In all, about 80 State Representatives spoke. Each side spouted statistics and anecdotes that were in their favor.
The list of quotes and references was long and awesome.
There was Mark Twain; the Bible (of course); Voltaire; and Janis Joplin (via Kris Kristofferson).
Our favorite came from State Rep. Evan Jenne, who compared the State House to Lord of the Flies, calling GOP lawmakers “a bunch of wild feral children pretending to be adults.”
He admonished House Republicans for adjourning three days early during the regular session (the reason lawmakers are back in Tallahassee for the first three weeks in June) and for not apologizing to Floridians for not carrying out their constitutional duty.
If Lord of the Flies is an apt allegory for the political rapscallionry in the State House, Jenne said, signifying Floridians in this debate is the character who suffered needlessly and unwittingly as a result.
“We've made them Piggy," he said. "We've made these people Piggy …And, unfortunately, just like Piggy, some of these people are going to die.”
(That book and its film adaptation haunt us to this day.)
Another notable quip came from State Rep. Matt Gaetz, who, er, piggybacked on something his dad, State Sen. Don Gaetz, said Wednesday about accepting federal money (the legislature already "lost its virginity on that issue," he said).
Gaetz had kind of a good point that ought to be taught in sex ed.
“We may not be virgins, but that doesn't mean we're promiscuous,” he said.
But he also said a lot of other stuff, including how accepting billions in federal dollars, even though the program could be tweaked or just go away if the state wants it, does "not advance the American dream," and instead does violence to it.
In any case, once news broke about the vote, supporters of Medicaid expansion were at the ready with media releases noting how angry they were about the outcome.
“Tonight, Florida Republicans showed their true colors: abandoning the people they serve and siding with wealthy special interests and their rigid Tea Party ideology," Florida Democratic Party Chair Alison Tant said in a written statement. "While House Republicans have tried to score political points and pander to their Tea Party base, Democrats in both chambers, as well as the Senate and business leaders from across the state, stood together in support of a commonsense compromise in an effort to help Florida’s middle class. The House GOP stood only for themselves."
The League of Women Voters, which has been fighting for it for months, said the fight was far from over.
"This is not a loss," said League of Women Voters of Florida President Pamela Goodman (even though it is a loss). "The fight goes on and we will not rest until the battle is won."
She added that 2016 will be an election year, and activists will continue to pressure lawmakers (though incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran will probably continue to ignore them, because, ya know, Obama).
"Today, the House did the worst thing by doing nothing," Goodman said.
So, there ya have it. See ya next year!
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2015.