| Cory Mills, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, and María Elvira Salazar failed to extend the ACA tax credits – and now, more than 4.5 million Floridians are “[feeling] the sticker shock” as health care costs nearly double on average, forcing some families to choose between “meals, mortgage or medicine,” according to new reporting from the Miami Herald.
One woman with a rare form of cancer is “[reducing] the amount of times” she gets essential bloodwork because the cost is simply too high, and turning to food banks for help.
Still another Florida dad is shelling out $50,000 a year for worse coverage thanks to Mills, Luna, Lee, and Salazar’s reckless agenda. “You gotta be kidding me,” he said.
DCCC Spokesperson Madison Andrus:
“Cory Mills, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, and María Elvira Salazar’s betrayal of Florida’s working families is unconscionable. Working families are being forced to choose between putting food on the table or a roof over their heads and getting the health care that their lives depend on. Mills, Luna, Lee, and Salazar are forcing millions of Americans to make an impossible choice – and it will come at the cost of real lives.”
Read the devastating stories for yourself:
Miami Herald: Meals, mortgage or medicine? Floridians on Obamacare are facing tough choices
Cancer Treatment or Groceries
- The new year brought Kellie Brvenik a choice. She could pay to keep her cancer at bay, or cover life’s other necessities, like food and her mortgage.
- [Kellie] Brvenik is one of 4.5 million Floridians who purchase health insurance through the ACA’s Federal Marketplace. And, like many of them, she’s now paying sharply more for the same coverage. […]
- Blood tests, hormone blockers — she needs both to monitor and contain the spread of her cancer, and she’s now paying more for each. Those aren’t covered and will run her hundreds of dollars a month.
- “I’ve had to reduce the amount of times I can have [some of those tests],” she said. She’s also had to turn to food banks for help.
$50,000 a Year in Premiums
- Michael Pancier felt the sticker shock immediately.
- Pancier, 60, is an attorney in Miami-Dade. He runs his own firm and for years has purchased health insurance through the Federal Marketplace for himself, his wife — who’s also self-employed — and their 21-year-old daughter.
- In 2025, Pancier’s premium was $2,167 a month, roughly what it had been for years. This year, it nearly doubled. He now pays a monthly $4,201 for the same coverage — actually, worse coverage, since one of his doctors no longer accepts his plan.
- “You gotta be kidding,” he recalled thinking when he saw his premium estimate. “You’re spending $50,000” a year.
Florida is particularly exposed.
- For many, the math was already hard before the credits expired. KFF projected that for a 60-year-old couple earning $85,000 in South Florida, the elimination of the enhanced premium tax credits would spike their premiums by nearly 350%. For a 40-year-old making $32,000 a year, that figure was over 200%.
- And nowhere are the effects of higher ACA premiums felt more than in Miami-Dade, which has the largest Obamacare enrollment population — more than 1 million last year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — of any county in the nation.
- Those inflated bills are eating into families’ budgets at a time when gas, grocery and housing costs are high and threatening to climb further, limiting many Americans’ ability to save money and build wealth.
- The state is one of 10 that has never expanded Medicaid eligibility, leaving a coverage gap for residents who earn too much to qualify for government insurance but too little to comfortably afford higher premiums, said Aidil Oscariz, a policy consultant at Catalyst Miami.
- And a disproportionate share of Florida workers are employed in seasonal or part-time industries, like tourism, meaning fewer receive insurance through their employers. Only 40% of Floridians are covered by employer-based health insurance, compared to 49% nationally, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
- The state also skews older. The ACA allows insurers to charge adults ages 50 to 64 up to three times more than younger enrollees for the same plan, meaning they were already paying more before the subsidies disappeared.
- “They’re facing a double whammy,” said McGough, the policy analyst.
- Since the start of the year, almost 200,000 Floridians dropped their ACA Marketplace plans — one of the sharpest declines in the country — according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
- But the ripple effects could reach beyond health care. Workers who rely on Marketplace plans may start choosing jobs based primarily on benefits rather than fit, McGough said. Small businesses, whose employees disproportionately rely on the Marketplace, could struggle to recruit and retain workers.
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