PLANT CITY, Fla. — Jorge Masson always knew his career would involve being of service.
"I knew that I wanted to help people. So I actually started off my career trying to become a firefighter paramedic," he said.
But life took him on a slightly different path.
"I went back to school for public health," he said.
Now, as a healthcare navigator with the Family Healthcare Foundation, he's merging his two passions.
"The simplest definition is that we're healthcare experts," he said.
And over the last year, that work has been kicked into overdrive as the group helped many in the Greater Tampa Bay area navigate changes to who qualifies for the state's Medicaid program.
"A lot of the process has been mostly that, you know, families getting correspondence and us explaining to them what it means and walking through the process either reapplying or appealing a denial or looking at a different program entirely," he said.
When this process began in April of 2023, the state Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) predicted that about 900,000 people who previously qualified for Medicaid wouldn't anymore.
Related: Almost 1M Floridians could be removed from state Medicaid program
The Florida Health Justice Project (FHJP) has been tracking this issue for the last year. According to the group, more than 1.6 million Floridians were terminated from the state Medicaid program between April 2023 and March 2024.
A report from the group shows that more than 600,000 people no longer qualify for the program. It also shows that more than a million others were disqualified for "procedural reasons."
We spoke to the group's executive director, Katie Roders Turner, who said that since August 2023, the Family Healthcare Foundation has helped at least 12,000 people through its navigators program.
"So, we're seeing a lot of parents with children who qualified for Medicaid during the continuous coverage period who were now no longer eligible anymore because there was going to be a lower income requirement for those parents in the state of Florida," she said.
Though Roders Turner said most of those impacted by the changes have been helped, they are still standing for those who may need a little more time.
"We know that some people may still not know that they don't have healthcare coverage just because they haven't gone to use it," she said.
The Family Healthcare Foundation offers free help to those looking to navigate the healthcare system year-round.
A state report says hundreds of frail elderly nursing home residents were stacked side by side, head to toe in a small church with no working air conditioning or refrigerator during Hurricane Helene.
