A rumor came out of Tallahassee yesterday that Sen. Don Gaetz told people at the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting that he has cancer and that he “may be done at the end of the session.”
- Why this matters: A cancer diagnosis is serious. That alone matters if true. However, Gaetz’s resignation from the Florida Senate would trigger a series of political moves. State Rep. Michelle Salzman has made it known that she covets his seat. Attorney Frank White initially filed for the seat when Sen. Doug Broxson retired in 2022, but White withdrew when Gaetz announced.
So I called Sen. Gaetz yesterday.
“In the process of explaining a bill, I had to do the tax package, conforming our tax code to the IRS code. And I had to do the Medicaid bill (SB 758) and all of that in Appropriations all at once today,” Gaetz said. “One of the questions that was asked by a Democratic Senator was, ‘Well, why don’t I just excuse people who have cancer from the work requirement with Medicaid?’”
He explained, “Well, I’m a cancer survivor. During the time that I was being treated for cancer and during the time I was an active cancer patient, nobody told me to go home and wait. Instead, I was expected to go to work and fulfill my responsibilities, and I did.”
- Gaetz said he told the Senator, “You can’t paint all cancer patients with the same brush. People are in different stages. It depends on what kind of cancer you have and all of that. Are you debilitated by it, or do you go get radiation treatments every morning, six o’clock, like I did? Is your doctor going to fly in and give you experimental chemotherapy treatments like mine did?”
He explained, “I mean, so I was able to keep working. I was in the Senate. I worked constantly, never missed a day, but I realized some people can’t do that for different reasons. So I said, ‘If there’s a medical diagnosis of cancer, if a doctor says, Hey, this person is debilitated either by the disease or by the treatment, then we’ll take that into account.’”
- Gaetz added, “That was the way I answered the question. No, I don’t have cancer. I had cancer. I’m five years plus free of cancer.”
Actual Exchange
I reviewed the video from the hearing. Here is the actual exchange:
Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith: “I understand that there’s some exemptions in the bill specifically related to individuals receiving hospice services who have a life expectancy of six months or less from having to fulfill the work requirement. I’m curious about individuals who are in cancer treatment, that they don’t have a less than six month life expectancy, but they’re working substantially less or perhaps not working at all because they’re undergoing cancer treatment. How does this bill interact with those individuals who are seeking care?”
Sen. Gaetz: “Unfortunately, there are millions of Floridians who struggle with cancer. Fortunately, there are millions of Floridians who receive cancer treatment successfully. I’m one of them. And nobody told me not to come to work during the time that I was receiving cancer treatment. I was expected to come to work just like everybody else, and I did.
“I think that would be a one-by-one determination, Senator. I don’t think we could say that everybody who’s receiving cancer treatment for whatever kind of cancer at whatever kind of stage is or isn’t qualified for a work requirement. I think that would have to be done on an individual medical basis. And I would suppose, I’m not a physician, but I would suppose that if a physician determined that an individual, because either the nature of the disease or the nature of the treatment, would be unable to work, that that could be documented medically and provided as evidence to the Agency for Healthcare Administration.
“And I would hope that questions like that would be among the questions that would be raised and answered in a business plan that would come back to you before it could be implemented.”