DeSantis was originally against the House reform effort, labeled the American Health Care Act, but flipped and then helped to pass it after several changes were made. | John Raoux/AP Photo Democrats launch website attacking 'DeSantisCare'

TALLAHASSEE — Long ago, there was Hillarycare. Then came Obamacare.

Now Florida Democrats are coining a new phrase for a health care-related attack: DeSantisCare. They're doing so in a new website criticizing Rep. Ron DeSantis, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, for advocating a health care system in which Floridians would “pay more for less."


“In Fox News green rooms and late-night Freedom Caucus meetings, DeSantis has been working to develop the perfect plan to raise Floridians’ health care costs, take away their coverage, gut protections for pre-existing conditions, and lower seniors’ standard of living,” reads the site, paid for by the Florida Democratic Party.

It then lays out what it says are the goals of “DeSantisCare:" blocking Medicaid expansion, gutting protections for pre-existing health conditions, making Medicare into a voucher program and “raising health care costs for all Floridians.”

DeSantis has long tried to repeal the landmark Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, but the law is considerably more popular today than it was when he first ran for Congress in 2012. A Kaiser Health tracking poll shows just 37 percent of adults supported it in January 2012, while 50 percent supported it in January of this year.

Based on the new website, it's clear Democrats see a liability in DeSantis’ health care record. But health care policy has been a liability for Democrats as well. Rick Scott parlayed his opposition to Obamacare into his first, successful run for governor in 2010. Before that, in 1994, Republicans campaigned against then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal, winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in decades.

DeSantis will face Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, in the November gubernatorial election. The nationally watched race will test the left and right’s ideological flanks in the country’s largest swing state ahead of the 2020 presidential race.

DeSantis, who voted in 2017 to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, is endorsed by President Donald Trump. Gillum, who backs universal health coverage through “Medicare for All,” is endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), leading DeSantis to accuse the Democrat of being a “socialist,” a charge Gillum denies.

“Andrew Gillum’s single-payer, government healthcare takeover would prohibit any Floridian from having private insurance. It would also cost BILLIONS of dollars, and the only way he would be able to pay for it would be by raising taxes. More government, less choice, and higher taxes—that’s Andrew Gillum’s disastrous plan for healthcare,” wrote DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson, responding to the Democrats’ website.

“Ron DeSantis wants to focus on making healthcare more affordable for Floridians across our state by pursuing patient-centered, market-based solutions,” Lawson wrote.

The ACA increased health coverage for an estimated 20 million Americans — primarily through Medicaid expansion — and made that coverage more standardized so patients, particularly those not covered by their employers, couldn’t be charged more or denied coverage for expensive diseases or common health issues like maternity care. The implementation of Obamacare marked the first time in recent history where the rate of the uninsured in the state fell.

State House Republicans blocked Medicaid expansion in 2015, a measure Scott ultimately opposed as well, leaving more than 380,000 Floridians still without health insurance.

The ACA largely paid for its expanded services by raising taxes on the rich and reducing reimbursements to hospitals and private health insurance companies for elderly patients funded through the federal Medicare program by $716 billion. Hospitals for the most part went along with those cuts because they knew more patients would be able to pay their hospital tabs after the law passed.

Still, DeSantis seized on the cuts during his 2012 bid for Congress, calling the ACA “the biggest threat to Medicare for the people who are on it.”

At the same time, he backed a plan by then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, in which the government would have given future Medicare beneficiaries money directly, as opposed to hospitals for services, that they could put toward an insurance plan. Democrats criticized it as a “voucher” program, and Republicans defended it as a “premium-support” plan.

Republicans tried repeatedly in 2017 to repeal and replace the ACA, an effort that ultimately failed in the Senate. The bill included rolling back tax increases on the wealthy. The Democrats’ DeSantisCare website says that he has advocated for using Obamacare repeal savings to “cut taxes for the rich.”

DeSantis was originally against the House reform effort, labeled the American Health Care Act, but flipped and then helped to pass it after several changes were made.

Those changes included allowing states to seek federal waivers that would have lowered premiums for healthier patients by enabling insurance companies to roll back coverage for essential services like maternity care, charge more for people with pre-existing health conditions and remove the ratio cap on what companies could charge their oldest customers compared to their youngest customers.

More than 3.1 million non-elderly Floridians could be at risk of losing coverage for illnesses they already have if protections for pre-existing health conditions were to be removed. Florida and 19 other GOP-led states are currently trying to dismantle the ACA along with those protections in a federal Texas court.

On top of those changes, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the underlying GOP-bill would have cut Medicaid by $834 billion, increased the number of uninsured by 23 million by 2026 and reduced the federal deficit by $119 billion.

Marc Caputo contributed to this report.