By Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment that would expand eligibility for Medicaid coverage have shelved putting the measure on the 2026 ballot and will try to take the issue to voters in 2028.
Florida Decides Healthcare, a political committee sponsoring the proposal, announced the change Thursday and said it stemmed from a new state law (HB 1205) that made it harder to reach the ballot. Florida Decides Healthcare and supporters of other proposed constitutional amendments are fighting the law in federal court.
“Politicians in Tallahassee didn’t just make it harder to get on the ballot, they tried to shut Floridians out and deny them their constitutional right to participate in their own democracy,” Mitch Emerson, executive director of Florida Decides Healthcare, said in a prepared statement. “HB 1205 wasn’t about transparency, it was sabotage aimed directly at citizen-led ballot initiatives. This law may have delayed us until 2028, but it will not stop us.”
Florida Decides Healthcare has sought as far back as 2020 to ask voters to approve a proposed constitutional amendment on Medicaid expansion but has not reached the ballot.
To get on the 2026 ballot, it would have needed to submit 880,062 valid petition signatures to the state. Florida Decides Healthcare said Thursday it had collected more than 200,000 petitions, though the Florida Division of Elections website showed 72,917 valid signatures had been tallied.
The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to address a long-running issue about making Medicaid available to people who are in what is known as a “coverage gap.” The issue involves people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford buying private health insurance.
Under the proposal, adults who have incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level would be eligible for Medicaid. That threshold, for example, would be an income of $21,597 for an individual this year.
State Republican leaders and groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce have long sought to make it harder to put proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. The law passed this year made a series of changes, including adding restrictions to the crucial petition-gathering process.
That included preventing non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens from collecting signatures. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in July issued a preliminary injunction blocking the restrictions on non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens, but a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month put that ruling on hold — effectively allowing the law to be enforced while the legal battle continues.