Florida Decides Healthcare is back with petition drive for Medicaid expansion

Florida ranks 47th in the country for affordable healthcare. And the group behind the long-simmering effort to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot is relaunching statewide signature collection this month — this time aiming for the 2028 ballot, after the Legislature moved the goalposts mid-game with a little thing called HB 1205.

You remember HB 1205. That’s the “citizen initiatives are fine as long as citizens never actually succeed” law championed in Tallahassee last year. It jacked up petition costs, buried campaigns in new paperwork, slowed verification to a crawl and, not coincidentally, landed right in the middle of Florida Decides Healthcare’s signature drive. The message was not subtle: direct democracy is cute until voters try to use it.

So Florida Decides Healthcare is doing what citizen groups do in Florida now — adapting, lawyering up, and pressing forward anyway.

The campaign will lean heavily into mail-in petitions, encouraging voters to request a signature form online, fill it out at home, and send it back in a prepaid envelope. Old-school civics, but with stamps. The group says it has lined up more than 100 grassroots organizations to help spread the word, which suggests this is less a relaunch and more a quiet dare to Tallahassee.

“This campaign has always been about giving Florida voters a choice,” said FDH Executive Director Mitch Emerson, in a statement that sounds uncontroversial until you remember how hard Florida’s leadership has worked to prevent exactly that.

The timing is not accidental. Florida’s healthcare math is getting uglier by the month. Cuts to Affordable Care Act subsidies have pushed thousands off marketplace plans, while others are watching premiums double or triple. Florida already has nearly a million people stuck in the Medicaid coverage gap — earning too little for private insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Stack that on top of ACA losses, and advocates warn that one in five Floridians could be uninsured within a year.

Meanwhile, the state continues to refuse billions in federal Medicaid dollars — money that could prop up hospitals, especially in rural areas, and create healthcare jobs — opting instead to send those funds to other states, like California and New York, who are happy to take it. Governor Ron DeSantis has consistently said ‘No, thanks,’ throughout his tenure, despite financial incentives offered in federal relief packages.

And yes, there’s a lawsuit. Next week, Florida Decides Healthcare v. Secretary of State Cord Byrd finally goes to trial in federal court. The goal is to overturn HB 1205 and restore what the group says is Floridians’ constitutional right to pursue ballot initiatives without politically motivated obstacles. Whether the courts agree is an open question.

Whether lawmakers intended the obstacles to be political is not.

Polling suggests voters are well ahead of the Capitol. A June 2025 GSG poll found 67% of Floridians support Medicaid expansion, including majorities of Democrats, independents, and even Republicans. When similar measures have made it onto ballots in red states, they’ve tended to pass — decisively.

Which may explain why Florida voters have been spared the opportunity.

The proposed amendment would expand Medicaid eligibility to adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level — potentially covering millions who currently fall through the cracks. Florida Decides Healthcare says it plans to keep centering the stories of those people while fighting on two fronts: in court and in neighborhoods.

Floridians, the group insists, want a say.

And Florida Decides Healthcare is betting that even Tallahassee can’t make the signature line disappear forever.

To sign the petition for Florida to expand Medicaid coverage, go to the Florida Decides Healthcare website and request to get the petition by mail.

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Florida Decides Healthcare, Medicare

Florida Decides Healthcare is back with petition drive for Medicaid expansion added by Ladra on February 5, 2026
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