More than 42,000 Florida kids are waiting for the state to grant them access to health insurance.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration said a lawsuit prevented them from expanding children’s health insurance. But it’s been two months since the state dropped that suit against the federal government.
Proponents for the expansion argue it's been closer to two years since, under Florida law, AHCA was supposed to grant more families access to Florida Kidcare.
“It's highly offensive and highly frustrating,” said Erica Monet Li, a healthy policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, a progressive-leaning nonprofit. Li said FPI receives messages from families wondering why Florida has yet to expand the program to let in more kids.
“This opportunity has been dangled in their face with no true coverage or no true results,” Li said.
According to the state, the expansion was held up by a lawsuit regarding a coverage rule that Florida filed against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. AHCA told Florida legislators last year that it couldn’t expand the insurance program because of the lawsuit.
But then, in February, Florida dropped the case. It has yet to expand the program.
As for why, that remains a mystery.
What is the Florida Kidcare expansion?
In 2023, after the KidCare expansion passed unanimously in both the Florida House and Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law. The program oversees subsidized health insurance programs for children, including Florida Healthy Kids Insurance and Children’s Medical Services.
The expansion increased the income eligibility for qualifying families from households within 200% of the federal poverty level to families within 300% of the federal poverty level. This meant that $53,300 was no longer the maximum income for a family of three to qualify. That new benchmark was $79,950.
A Florida House analysis estimated the bill would help 42,073 children. It was meant to serve as a bridge for families stuck in an income gap, not making enough money for Affordable Care Act Marketplace insurance but making too much money for subsidized state and federally provided insurance.
The plans for the expansion were supposed to go into effect at the start of 2024, but then the state challenged the federal government over a new coverage rule.
Why no expansion?
In 2024, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued rules requiring states to provide 12 months of continuous coverage for children in Medicaid and in the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), even if the family misses a monthly premium. The idea was to protect children’s healthcare or treatments from being interrupted by temporarily missed payments.
AHCA sued in federal court to eliminate the 12-month requirement. The complaint was dismissed. A few months later, Florida unsuccessfully filed an appeal.
At the start of 2025, Florida was supposed to begin upholding the 12-month coverage rule and to roll out the Kidcare expansion. However, when President Donald Trump took office, Florida filed another complaint, with experts believing that Florida did so in pursuit of a more favorable outcome.
That case stalled throughout 2025.
At a meeting in October, state senators asked AHCA Deputy Secretary for Medicaid Brian Meyer why the expansion hadn’t started yet.
“We are certainly proponents of the legislation we would have implemented long ago if we could,” Meyer said, referring to the lawsuit as being the reason AHCA hadn’t started it.
With the lawsuit out of the picture, Central Florida Public Media asked AHCA when it planned to roll out the expansion. It did not respond.
What now?
The state has not announced any plans for the expansion of KidCare, and healthcare advocates are no longer waiting.
In March, the Florida Health Justice Project and the National Health Law Program filed a lawsuit in a Leon County Circuit Court against AHCA and Florida Kidcare.
The suit was filed on behalf of three children, two siblings from Indian River County and a child from Broward County. The plaintiffs are asking the court to order the agencies to follow state law and evaluate the children’s eligibility under the 300% standard.
“When agencies refuse to implement a law that expands affordable health care for children, families pay the price,” said Steven Schmidt, senior attorney at the National Health Law Program. “State officials have a clear legal duty to apply the income standard set by the Legislature. At stake is whether children in families across Florida can obtain and keep health care coverage they can afford.”
FPI analyst Erica Monet Li said the legal tactic is an effort to force Florida’s hand on legislation that no politicians opposed in the legislative process.
“The hope would be that this would result in the program being expanded sooner rather than later,” she said.
