Florida's Medicaid expansion advocates are seizing on the Zika crisis as a compelling reason for Tallahassee's conservative Republicans, who have twice rejected expansion, to reconsider their opposition.

  • Citing Zika, advocates push for medicaid expansion
  • Pregnant women unable to afford OB/GYN visit for Zika-related counseling

Accepting the federal government's offer of $51 billion to cover roughly 800,000 additional low-income Floridians through Medicaid would mean extending health care to 283,000 women who are currently uninsured. Most of those women, the advocates argue, are unable to afford a visit to an OB/GYN for Zika-related counseling if they are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant, as Gov. Rick Scott has suggested.

"For him to make this call of action to these women, it's really shameful, right, to ask this of them when they really don't have the means, whether it's an income to pay for this visit or any type of insurance to cover this visit," said Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates Legislative Representative Kim Diaz.

Scott, who initially opposed Medicaid expansion but reversed course ahead of his razor-thin 2014 re-election, only to oppose it again after he was sworn in for a second term, has expressed concern that expansion could pose an open-ended burden on state taxpayers. Under the Affordable Care Act, Washington is obligated to pay no less than 90 percent of the long-term cost.

A slew of Zika-infected mothers giving birth to babies with microcephaly, however, could cause taxpayer-funded public expenditures to skyrocket. The physical and educational therapy required of children suffering from microcephaly, which causes an abnormally small head size, is significant - and expensive.

For those reasons, Medicaid expansion proponents see an opening.

"It's sad that it would take something like this, but if it does, then it will have a huge benefit for the state of Florida for public health, not just when it comes to Zika, but when it comes to a whole host of other issues that people need access to health coverage (for)," said Damien Filer of Progress Florida.

Even if Scott were to again support expansion, however, it would take an unlikely conversion by the conservative Florida House for the state to accept the federal funding.

"We're not dancing," incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R-Land O' Lakes) famously declared during a 2015 Medicaid expansion floor debate.

Still, in public opinion-sensitive Tallahassee, even the most die-hard of positions have been known to give way to new realities. It's something Medicaid expansion's champions are calculating may be happening now, as the Zika virus continues its threatening march across Florida.