Florida, Medicaid | featured news

A Florida Senate committee voted Monday against expanding Medicaid to roughly 1 million of the state's poorest under the federal health overhaul and instead proposed a voucher plan that would require patients to pay premiums and co-pays.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a leading Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law, said he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people.

Republican governors like Rick Scott of Florida who say they will defy President Barack Obama and opt out of a planned expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor are setting up a fight with the health care providers in their own backyards.