Florida’s health care system is at a crossroads. The state is growing rapidly, the population is aging, and families across Florida are struggling to access timely, affordable care.

In many cases, the challenge is not a shortage of skilled providers. Instead, outdated laws limit competition, restrict who can provide care, and reduce patient choices.

Rep. Mike Redondo has filed legislation to remove these government barriers and modernize Florida’s health care delivery system. HB 693 is designed to expand access to care by addressing multiple structural obstacles that prevent services from reaching patients who need them most.

Rather than relying on a single narrow reform, the bill addresses several long-standing issues simultaneously. When providers have greater flexibility to serve patients and patients have more options, care becomes more accessible and more affordable.

HB 693 eliminates remaining Certificate-of-Need requirements for nursing homes, hospice services, and intermediate care facilities for individuals with developmental disabilities. It also allows Florida to join interstate compacts for physician assistants and emergency medical services professionals, making it easier for qualified providers to move to Florida and meet growing demand without unnecessary delays.

The legislation expands independent practice authority for advanced registered nurse practitioners, including psychiatric nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, and clinical nurse specialists. These highly trained professionals already play a critical role in patient care, particularly in mental health and underserved communities.

HB 693 also removes the supervisory cap on physician assistants, allowing physicians to oversee more PAs and increase patient capacity. This reflects modern, team-based care models and helps ensure patients are seen sooner without sacrificing quality.

Importantly, the bill includes commonsense transparency protections. Patients would receive notice of out-of-network referrals, and payments made for cost-effective care would count toward deductibles, helping families avoid surprise expenses and make informed decisions.

Together, these reforms promote a patient-centered approach that prioritizes access, choice, and transparency. At a time when families are feeling the pressure of rising health care costs, HB 693 offers a path toward a more responsive and modern system.

Rep. Redondo’s bill puts patients first, and lawmakers should support its passage.

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Skylar Zander is the State Director of Americans for Prosperity-Florida.

House Speaker Daniel Perez opened the 2026 Legislative Session by casting the chamber’s activities last year as a part of a necessary transition shaped by internal fights, bruising negotiations and a public rupture with Gov. Ron DeSantis.

When he took the gavel in November 2024, he said, House lawmakers entered the subsequent Session “believing that our service here could matter.”

“In the weeks and months that followed,” he continued, “our story took several surprising twists and turns.”

Perez’s message, while reflective, was largely a presaging of what lies ahead this year: a Session dominated by affordability pressures, property tax politics and a budget outlook that could force lawmakers to choose between trimming recurring spending and sustaining popular programs. “Affordability and insurance. Taxes and the economy. Prescription drug prices and the rising cost of public benefits,” Perez said.

“We must ensure Florida stays at the center of our planet’s race for the stars, and that our infrastructure keeps pace with our growth. Every child in Florida, from the unborn to our college graduates, deserves a fair shot at finding their own American Dream.”

The Miami Republican also used the moment to reflect on the volatility of the 2025 Session, when, in his telling, the House “found (its) voice” and “insisted on our independence.”

That included overrides of DeSantis’ budget vetoes, the investigation and dismantling of First Lady Casey DeSantis’ questionable Hope Florida charity, replacing DeSantis’ Special Session on immigration enforcement with one the Legislature devised and, ahead of the 2026 Session, introducing a fleet of bills with concrete property tax proposals while the Governor stalled on issuing his own.

When DeSantis fumed at the House’s open attempt to regain a coequal footing with the executive branch, Perez called the Governor “emotional” and prone to “temper tantrums” while stressing, “I consider him a friend. I consider him a partner.”

Under Perez, the House has also set to follow through on President Donald Trump’s call for mid-decade redistricting — an effort DeSantis and Senate President Ben Albritton also support, but have been slower to act on.

Perez framed the House’s comparative expeditiousness as an alternative to Tallahassee’s transactional culture.

“We learned that words without truth have no meaning. We learned that actions without humility lack consequence,” he said. “We learned that issues we tackle are not easily reducible to a slogan or an idea. … But difficult doesn’t mean impossible, and hard isn’t an excuse for cowardice.”

Those lines land in a Capitol still feeling the aftershocks of 2025, when budget and tax disputes between the House and Senate pushed the 60-day Regular Session into extended overtime. Perez’s friction with Albritton, whom he embraced before the Governor’s State of the State address Tuesday, remains a live factor. The Senate is again pushing Albritton’s “Rural Renaissance” package after it fell apart in the House last year, and Albritton has said he may prefer tackling major property tax relief after the Regular Session, which could collide with House urgency.

Hovering above it all is Perez’s feud with DeSantis, a rivalry that hardened last year and has since only been betrayed by a veneer of civility and common causes. On the most recent flashpoint, redistricting, the Governor this month called for a Special Session in April to redraw congressional lines — markedly later than when Perez views as ideal.

As for what will happen with that undertaking and many other hot-button issues the Legislature faces this year, it’s anyone’s guess, the Speaker said.

“Honestly, I don’t know what is going to happen,” he said. “That’s OK, because the journey is the best part.”

In his final State of the State address as Governor, a defiant Ron DeSantis defended the controversial Hope Florida charity and proclaimed that he has delivered “big results” during his time in office.

“We have set the standard for the rest of the country to follow. We are the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis said in his 30-minute speech addressing lawmakers on the opening day of the 2026 Session.

DeSantis urged the Legislature to pass bills on illegal immigration, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs, expanding gun rights and supporting the state’s rural areas. 

“My message is simple. Get the bills to my desk,” DeSantis said. “In the spirit of 1776, I’m happy to put my John Hancock on those pieces of legislation.”

In the debate on how to provide property tax relief, DeSantis’ tone has, at times, been combative and critical of his own political party.

On Tuesday, his approach was different.

“The Legislature has the ability to place a measure on the ballot to provide transformational relief for taxpayers. Let’s resolve to all work together, get something done and let the people have a say,” DeSantis said. 

DeSantis credited his wife, First Lady Casey DeSantis, and Hope Florida for helping Floridians get off public assistance to save the state $130 million annually, he said.

“We have proven that a hand up is better than a handout,” DeSantis said.

Following DeSantis’ speech, Democrats struck back to offer their own take on the Hope Florida scandal.

“The Governor remains completely out of touch with reality. Eight years of his ineffective and dangerous leadership has left Florida less affordable and more corrupt,” Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman said. She said millions of dollars were illegally funneled to a political committee controlled by DeSantis’ then Chief of Staff, James Uthmeier. Berman noted that Uthmeier was later appointed by DeSantis to be Florida’s Attorney General.

In the rest of the State of the State address, DeSantis called for oversight on artificial intelligence as he warned about the new technology’s dangers. 

“Artificial intelligence is touted as being the key to curing cancer and expanding America’s military edge over arrivals, and perhaps this will be true. But this technology also threatens to upend key parts of our economy in ways that could leave many Americans out of work and with consumers footing the bill for the cost of power-intensive data centers,” DeSantis said.

“As AI chatbots have already been linked to teen suicides, it can also further devolve our society into a focus not on substance, but on online slop.”

The state has already turned over 20,000 undocumented immigrants to the federal government to be deported, DeSantis said.

Before the history books weigh in on the legacy of the DeSantis administration, the Governor described what he called a fiscally responsible state that promotes school choice and is winning cultural wars.

The state said the state has more than tripled its rainy-day fund and paid off nearly half of the state’s taxpayer supported debt, DeSantis said.

“Because the Legislature has supported efforts to accelerate repayment of this debt, we’ve saved more than $1 billion on principal and interest costs,” DeSantis said. “We’ve defeated attempts to force boys into girls’ sports, to inject gender ideology into elementary schools and deny parents the right to direct the education and upbringing of their children. We have ensured that our schools have a duty to educate, not a right to indoctrinate.”

One of the state’s crowning achievements has been Everglades restoration, DeSantis said.

“Even the flamingos have returned inside the Glades,” DeSantis said. “This has been the largest environmental restoration in the entire country. You can now walk into the swamp, sit on a cypress stump and see nature healing. The ghost of Osceola need cry no more.”

With America’s semiquincentennial upon us, DeSantis weaved in references to the Founding Fathers, a favorite topic of his, throughout the speech.

“We are the keepers of the flame of liberty that burned in Philadelphia in July of 1776,” DeSantis said. “We will not allow the flame to go out. We will answer the call. We will go forward with courage. We will take bold action. We will get the job done.”