Florida's Governor Race Health Plans Don't Name DPC

Florida picks a governor on Tuesday, November 3. Both major candidates built a health care plan. Neither one names the model that Florida wrote into its statutes eight years ago.

That gap showed up in print on Halloween. In an Orlando Sentinel guest commentary, Skylar Zander, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Florida, praised Republican Byron Donalds’ plan and wrote that “Direct primary care can strengthen relationships between doctors and patients without unnecessary middlemen.” The line reads as part of the Donalds agenda. The campaign’s own health care page doesn’t say it.

What Donalds is proposing

Donalds calls his plan “Your Doctor, Your Price.” His campaign page lists five items:

• Require doctors and hospitals to post guaranteed cash prices for the 50 most common medical tests and procedures.
• Give patients who pay cash the lowest discounted rate a hospital gives large insurers.
• Let what you pay an out-of-network doctor count toward your yearly insurance deductible.
• Require insurers to approve common treatments within three days.
• Expose pharmacy middleman markups on prescriptions.

The list has grown since the rollout. When Donalds introduced the plan in The Villages in April, Florida Politics reported that it would make providers post cash prices for their top 20 services. The page now says 50.

A DPC reader will notice how much of this is about cash. But the page is written for hospitals and procedures. It doesn’t say how a flat monthly membership would fit a per-procedure price list, or whether a membership fee counts as “what you pay to an out-of-network doctor.”

What Jolly is proposing

Democrat David Jolly’s health care page starts somewhere else. He would expand Medicaid and run a five-year pilot to “dramatically expand community health centers in every Florida county.”

His campaign frames the clinics as the answer to a coverage-only plan. “Expansion provides coverage, but people still need somewhere to actually get care,” the page says. It puts about 266,000 Florida adults in the gap between Medicaid and marketplace subsidies, and it says expansion could begin “within months once the Legislature approves it.”

The Donalds page doesn’t say how its mandates would become law.

Jolly’s page doesn’t mention direct primary care either. His primary care build-out runs through community health centers.

The law that’s already on the books

Florida settled the basic DPC question in 2018. Under Section 624.27 of the Florida Statutes, a “direct health care agreement” between a provider and a patient, a patient’s representative or an employer “does not constitute insurance and is not subject to the Florida Insurance Code.” A provider doesn’t need an insurance license to sell one.

The statute also sets terms. The agreement must:

• be in writing and signed
• let either side end it with at least 30 days’ written notice
• describe the services the monthly fee covers
• state the monthly fee and the fees for services outside it
• offer a refund of prepaid fees if the provider stops offering care

The signature page must also say, in contrasting color and at least 12-point type, that the agreement is not health insurance and that the provider won’t file claims against the patient’s plan for covered services.

Put that next to the Donalds plan and one detail stands out. Florida already makes a DPC practice put its fee in writing, in a signed agreement. The Donalds health page, built around price transparency, doesn’t mention that law.

The statute is broad, too. It covers providers licensed under eight chapters of Florida law, including physicians, osteopathic physicians, nurses and dentists, plus group practices.

Where DPC fits

The two plans aim at different patients. Donalds is writing for people who pay hospitals and insurers and can’t see the price. Jolly is writing for the uninsured and for people who can’t find a clinic. Neither plan is about a membership practice, and neither page proposes changing Section 624.27.

The pressure that pushes patients toward membership care is still there, whoever wins. The Florida Phoenix reported on Sunday that average 2027 ACA plan premiums in Florida will rise 10.4% before subsidies, citing state insurance regulators. It also reported that 3.85 million Floridians effectuated 2026 coverage on the federal exchange, down from 4.3 million in 2025. Open enrollment for January coverage runs through December 15.

If you run a DPC practice in Florida, the agreement you sign on Wednesday follows the same statute as the one you signed last week. What could change is the market around it. A price-posting law could put hospital cash prices next to your membership fee. A Medicaid expansion could give some uninsured neighbors a different place to get care. Either way, the rules for your contract were written in 2018, and neither campaign proposed to rewrite them.