WTXL (ABC) Tallahassee
News at 11 p.m.
June 19, 2015
News transcriptAnd as the special legislative session was coming to an end, Florida congressman Patrick Murphy came to the capital in Tallahassee to call for healthcare reform. Murphy, who is running for the U.S Senate, joined democratic lawmakers to criticize the Republican-led legislature for not extending healthcare coverage to 800 thousand uninsured Floridians. This year the Senate proposed a plan to use federal Medicaid dollars through private insurers, but Governor Rick Scott and the house defeated it. Murphy introduced several people who said the affordable care act, known as Obamacare, had helped them and said Democrats can’t stop fighting for them.Patrick Murphy: “We simply can’t turn our backs on these folks now. It’s unacceptable that this partisanship and lack of action has gone on.”But Sal Nuzzo of the conservative James Madison Institute says it was a good thing the Senate proposal failed.Sal Nuzzo: “There are reforms that need to be made in the healthcare system, but they don’t involve expanding an already broken entitlement program. We had anticipated that the Feds would reject both of those elements of the Senate’s plan. What they would have been left with was just a traditional expansion of the existing Medicaid program.”Murphy says lawmakers should have focused more on the question of tax subsidies for Obamacare recipients through the federal health care exchange. The subsidies depend on an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling, King v. Burwell, which is expected soon.
