He's not worried.
There is no sense of urgency in Florida, the state with the most to lose if the Supreme Court decides to strip health insurance subsidies away from Obamacare customers who purchase on the federal exchange. Whether they think the court won't take such drastic action, they think the federal government will figure something out, or they just don't give a damn that a million Floridians could lose their health insurance, Florida lawmakers
aren't acting.
[T]here is little talk of a Plan B here, such as creating a state-run exchange where subsidies would still be available, if the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidy program. Asked about the case last month at the American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, said, "This is not my program." He added, "It's a federal problem."
Will Governor Scott and other Republicans face a backlash from subsidy recipients if the lawsuit succeeds? The answer is far from clear.
That seems to be the bet Florida lawmakers are making—people aren't going to be outraged if they lose their shiny, new health insurance because that's just the way government works. That's a distinct possibility. After all, people didn't rise up to punish state leaders for refusing Medicaid expansion at the ballot box. But the two cases are very different—one was people not getting access to something they didn't have already, and the second is having something stripped away.
Florida has 1.6 million people enrolled in Obamacare. That means 1.6 million people wanted insurance badly enough that they searched out their options themselves because the state did nothing to help them. They found help through the organizations who did the state's work for them, and figured out how to get coverage. A huge majority of them—well over 80 percent if Florida reflects the rest of the nation—qualified for the financial assistance of federal subsidies that the Supreme Court might take away.
The very success of Obamacare enrollments—two years in a row—argues strongly against the idea that people aren't just going to care that much. They cared enough in the first year to deal with a broken website and a confusing system to sign up by the millions and in the second year they cared enough to reenroll. It's hard to believe that they'll be as blasé about losing insurance as their political leaders.