Florida’s top Medicaid official came before the Legislature Tuesday to update state senators on a pending legal battle with the federal government over expansion of the popular children’s health insurance program known as Florida KidCare.

But Brian Meyer couldn’t answer a simple question: How many children have been disenrolled from the program because their families haven’t paid the premiums, which is at the center of a tussle between the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)?

Meyer couldn’t answer another question during a hearing before the Senate Health Policy Committee: How many children would have been enrolled had the expansion been implemented as planned to cover children living in families that earn up to 300% of the federal poverty level, which amounts to $96,450 annually? Now, only children living in families earning 200% of the federal poverty level qualify. The Legislature ordered the higher threshold in 2023 but the administration hasn’t complied.

“I don’t have that information handy, but I’d be certainly happy to work with our Florida Healthy Kids Corp. partners on that information,” Meyer said, responding to Boynton Beach Democrat Sen. Lori Berman’s questions.

Berman told the Florida Phoenix after the meeting she hopes Meyer has the answers to her simple questions.

“But having been here as long as I have, I hear those responses very often,” Berman said, referring to Meyer’s non-answer.

The Florida Phoenix asked the Agency for Health Care Administration (which administers the Medicaid program) and Florida Healthy Kids (which helps administer the Florida KidCare program) for disenrollment data prior to publishing this story.

Neither agency provided the data before first publication of this story.

The Phoenix also asked those agencies for disenrollment data in July and got no information

In an email to the Florida Phoenix following publication, KidCare spokesperson Ashley Carr said 17,510 children were removed from the subsidized program between Sept. 1, 2024, and Aug. 31, 2025, for failing to pay the premium. That equals 7% of children with subsidized policies over that time span, Carr said.

Another 8,614 children who weren’t receiving subsidies but were enrolled in the program were removed for failing to pay their premiums over that same time span. Those children live in families that earn too much to qualify for subsidies and are willing to pay the full costs of the health insurance plan.

While the dispute over the 12-month eligibility requirement doesn’t apply to the full-pay children, some of them would have qualified for subsidies had the state expanded the program as directed by the 2023 law.

Florida KidCare is the umbrella name for the federal subsidized children’s health insurance program, which allows families that earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid to access affordable health insurance. Florida KidCare is an optional Medicaid expansion and families must contribute to the costs of care by paying monthly premiums and co-pays.

Meyer’s presentation largely focused on legal wrangling with CMS over expanding the program. The dispute began under former President Joe Biden but continues to linger under President Donald Trump.

The state sued the federal government in February 2024 after being told the feds would approve the expansion but that the state would have to abide by a 12-month continuous eligibility requirement. That was dictated by the 2023 federal budget, as flagged in a “Frequently Asked Questions” document sent to Medicaid directors nationwide and later codified into rule.

It requires the state to keep eligible enrolled children in the program for a year even if their parents miss the state-mandated monthly premiums.

The DeSantis administration argued at the time that the federal government overstepped its authority with the requirement. Florida was the only state to challenge the rule.

The lawsuit has not moved much since first being filed. U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven in July ordered the parties to provide an update on the legal challenge by September. That’s when attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice asked Scriven to keep the case open.

“We are continuing to have conversations related to kind of settling this that will be an amenable position to the state and also to the federal government, so we are hopeful we get somewhere hopefully in the near future,” he said.

Meyer said it’s difficult to predict the timeline of the litigation. “We are certainly committed to finding alternative pathways forward to implement the legislation,” he said, adding that the state is in discussions with the “higher levels” at CMS.

Several members of the committee expressed support for the state’s position. Stuart Republican Sen. Gayle Harrell said she didn’t understand the federal government tying the 12-month continuous eligibility with expansion approval.

“We are essentially being held hostage on implementation of raising the income eligibility to 300% of the federal poverty level under the (Medicaid) waiver because of this lawsuit,” Harrell said.

The continued delay in expanding access to Florida KidCare comes with the number of uninsured children in the state on the rise, with a new study showing that 8.5% of children in the state are uninsured, up from 7.4% in 2024. That’s an increase of about 67,000 uninsured children.

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Christine Sexton reporting. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].