Florida's Charlie Crist has
made no bones about his support for Obamacare in his run to retake the governorship, and more specifically,
Medicaid expansion. Crist isn't just supporting the expansion, he told the Florida Nurses Association this weekend, he's got a team working on figuring out
how he could implement expansion with an executive order on his first day in office, and bypass going through the Republican-laden legislature.
"There is some school of thought that makes the argument that there is the potential the governor can do it unilaterally by executive order. If we have the research that proves that is a viable argument, I'll sign the executive order that day," Crist said.
That means 848,000 people could get health coverage on day one of Crist's administration. The White House estimates that expanding that coverage would
create 63,000 jobs in the state.
Crist's willingness to go the executive action route is important, as the Republican Florida House remains staunchly opposed to the expansion, unless they can force the White House to accept a waiver on their terms. Gov. Rick Scott, initially completely opposed to expansion, sort of half-heartedly came around to endorsing it in 2013. But he did little to work with his legislature to bring them around, and has only agreed to it for as long as the federal government pays 100 percent of the cost—through 2017. Presumably, after that Scott would be okay with dropping hundreds of thousands off the Medicaid rolls. That's not the way to run a state.
Crist is looking at how to bypass all that, which should be good for at least a few hundred thousand votes. The latest PPP polling shows that Florida voters support Medicaid expansion by a 61-27 percent margin.