Jeb Bush: ‘Compromise’ Needed in Florida Medicaid Expansion Deadlock

Is Jeb Bush trying to lose the 2016 Republican primary race before he even enters the race?

This seems to be the case, as the former Governor of Florida—who once governed with an iron conservative fist—recently went across the Republican political grain when he told a group of people in Concord, New Hampshire, that the federal government and the Florida Legislature need to sit down and find a “compromise” on expanding Medicaid under Obamacare:

The feds and the executive branch and representatives from the [Florida] House and Senate ought to get together and try to forge a compromise.

Bush contends that “expanding Medicaid without reforming it is not going to solve our problems over the long run.” Bush’s spokeswoman told the Miami Herald that he is against expanding Medicaid.

“We need to reform Medicaid, and there’s a plan to do that in Florida that’s a pretty good one, so if it was part of that, and there are trade-offs and all that stuff — that’s how you get past an impasse,” he said to reporters.

Bush’s friend and presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio—along with other announced presidential candidates, Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz—opposes expanding Medicaid and hasn’t expressed support for any kind of compromise. The three senators are firmly behind the “full repeal” of Obamacare.