Florida Officials Want to Delay Expanding Health Care to 42,000 Kids

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is delaying more than 40,000 children from getting medical coverage as the state awaits President-elect Donald Trump’s impact on health care.

President Joe Biden’s administration approved Florida’s plan to expand its KidCare health insurance program for an extra 42,000 families on Monday. That expansion raised the household income threshold from 200 percent to 300 percent of the U.S. federal poverty level.

The KidCare program offers lower costs for families to get health insurance for their children for everything from doctor visits and immunizations to emergency care.

But to keep the federal government’s approval of this expansion, Florida must comply with the federal rule that bans states from discontinuing children’s health coverage during a yearlong period even when families stop paying their premiums.

Florida challenged that rule in court and ultimately lost, but now health care officials in DeSantis’ administration want to wait to see if Trump’s presidency could change the rules around continuous coverage for children.

“At the center of Florida’s delaying of this healthcare expansion to support more children is a federal requirement of continuous coverage,” Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek.

“Florida has challenged the rule that wouldn’t allow the state to drop coverage if a premium payment is missed, and the delay is in their hope the Trump administration may allow them to gain an exception from it.”

Alecia Collins, deputy chief of staff for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, told Newsweek that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is “making a concerted effort to advance the political priorities of the Biden Administration.”

“It would be wise for CMS to show deference to the incoming administration by allowing them the opportunity to review and approve significant policy initiatives that are likely to impact their time in office,” Collins said.

She added: “This program could have been approved in its entirety as submitted by the Agency, but the Biden Administration failed to do so and added their own new conditions. Therefore, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) has asked for additional time to review and ultimately work through the new program requirements with the incoming administration as they will likely have their own, differing requirements.”

The Florida agency now plans to ask for a 30-day extension of its deadline to “ensure we have an opportunity to work with the new administration on this issue,” Collins said.

The roughly 40,000 families have been waiting two years since the KidCare expansion was originally approved, and some say forcing another month or more of delays could harm the affected children even more.

Florida has also taken Medicaid away from around 532,000 children during the federal unwinding process that occurred after the pandemic-era continuous coverage rule ended.

While Beene said Trump’s second term likely wouldn’t make the KidCare expansion go away entirely, the time families will have to wait could make a severe impact on low-income families.

“The general feeling is a program that would make healthcare more affordable to children would not get axed even under a new administration, but there could be further provisions made to the existing program that would make it easier for states to restrict coverage under certain situations,” Beene said. “The problem with all of this is as this war of words is going on, there are children missing out on coverage they may need.”

Update 12/6/24, 5:26 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Collins.