Now that Florida’s Department of Corrections has auctioned off the job of providing state inmates with health services to the highest-bidding companies, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is moving ahead with his controversial plan to privatize prisoners’ health care. Since Florida is now locked into a contract with Corizon Healthcare of Nashville, and plans to sign a second contract with Pittsburgh-based Wexford Health Sources, Gov. Scott’s administration has already begun to lay off nearly two thousand state workers whose jobs have now become obsolete.

As the Miami Herald reports, nearly 2,000 state workers are beginning to receive notices that their jobs are ending, as part of the nation’s biggest push to outsource prisoners’ health care to private companies:

“Due to the outsourcing of this function, your position will be deleted,” reads a dryly worded dismissal notice from the Department of Corrections, sent to 1,890 state employees in the past two weeks. [...]

In the dismissal letters, prison officials emphasize that dismissed workers will get first consideration for new jobs at one of the two for-profit vendors, though with fewer benefits. The workers also expect to pay more out of their pockets for their own health insurance.

Many make less than $35,000 a year, have not had a raise in six years and live in economically distressed areas home to many state prisons, including Bradford, Dixie, Levy, Suwannee and Union counties.

Labor unions representing the affected health workers are already gearing up to fight against the Scott administration’s decision to outsource health care. As AFSCME spokesman Doug Martin told the Miami Herald, unions believe that privatizing prison health care is “bad for employees who will lose retirement and health benefits and probably pay,” as well as a “rotten deal for taxpayers.”

Although lawmakers like Scott tout privatization as an effective cost-saving measure to offset expensive care in the state prison system, private prisons often don’t actually save states any money. In reality, investigations into privatized prisons have found that states shift responsibilities to outside companies purely to cut costs and skimp on prisoners’ health care, often leading to “inhumane” conditions that have sparked legal challenges. Inmates in Arizona sued the state after it failed to provide adequate health care in its privatized prison facilities — leading to cases where prisoners were denied proper medical treatment and, in some instances, suffered preventable deaths.

In fact, the Arizona Department of Corrections recently leveled a fine against Wexford Health Services — one of the very same private companies that Florida plans to hire — after discovering repeated cases of negligent care in the prisons that Wexford took over. But that hasn’t stopped Scott’s administration from firing Florida’s health care employees in favor of a future relationship with Wexford.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been an outspoken opponents of President Obama’s landmark health reform law over the past year. Back in July, he announced that his state would not be setting up a health insurance exchange or expanding the Medicaid program under Obamacare, even though his state has some of the worst rates of uninsurance in the nation.

But now that Obama has won re-election and the health law’s implementation is marching forward, Scott has showed some signs that he may consider softening his stance. And a new report from Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute could give him even more reason to do, since it concludes that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would save Florida about $100 million each year while extending health coverage to those who need it most:

The researchers determined the state could save up to $100 million a year because allowing people to join Medicaid would reduce the financial burden on other state-funded safety net programs.

“It is time for Florida’s elected officials to take a serious look at this option,” said Joan Alker, research associate professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “Our study found that the state can actually save money while ensuring that a million Floridians can get the health coverage they desperately need. And this decision affects all Floridians as Florida’s hospitals will be put in jeopardy if the state does not move forward.”

Scott has said that he opposes expanding Medicaid in his state because — even though the federal government will pay for 100 percent of the expansion during the first three years, and at least 90 percent of the expansion’s costs after 2020 — he worries that it will be too expensive after 2020. But Georgetown researchers predict that since the expansion will actually strengthen the health care safety net in Florida, the reduced strain on other social programs will more than offset the costs of covering more low-income Floridians.

As the authors of the report put it, “Extending Medicaid coverage to Florida citizens should have positive effects in terms of lower mortality, less illness, improved economic stability and a higher quality of life for those gaining coverage. In turn, improved health may well lead to lower overall health costs for both these individuals and the state.”

Other researchers have also documented the potential cost-saving effects of expanding Medicaid in Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And public opinion is on their side, since nearly two-thirds of white Southerners support expanding Medicaid. Nevertheless, Republican governors like Scott continue to stand in the way, ultimately sabotaging their low-income residents and their states’ own bottom lines.

President Obama’s re-election this week solidified the fact that his landmark health care reform law will be sticking around. Even conservative health policy analysts are beginning to admit defeat, acknowledging that their long fight to repeal Obamacare is certainly a losing battle. But when it comes to effectively implementing Obamacare across states to ensure that 30 million previously uninsured Americans have access to health care by 2014, intransigent Republican governors could still stall the process by continuing to resist key pieces of the health care law.

Over the past year, GOP lawmakers have continually resisted two of Obamacare’s important state-level provisions: setting up state-run health insurance exchanges and expanding the eligibility threshold for the Medicaid program. At least eight governors insisted on putting off their decisions about implementing Obamacare after the presidential election, just in case a Romney win would have eliminated the need for them to cooperate with the health law. But as Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff notes, that excuse has run out and those lawmakers now need to take a different approach:

In the wake of President Obama’s reelection, and with the Affordable Care Act’s future secured, Republican-led states are scrambling to figure out what comes next for the law they squarely oppose.

“The folks who need to restrategize at this point are going to be the Republican governors, for the most part,” says Cheryl Smith, a director at Leavitt Partners, the health consulting firm founded by former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.

“They can’t just say no anymore. They have to accept that the Supreme Court ruling was what it was, and that the status quo is not sustainable.”

Nonetheless, some Republican governors are already digging in their heels. Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) — one of Obamacare’s most vocal critics, despite the fact that his state has some of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation — has already said that Obama’s re-election doesn’t change anything for him. Scott will not change his decision to reject the Medicaid expansion, denying health coverage to 1 million low-income Floridians who could have otherwise accessed the program, and he plans to continue avoiding setting up a federal exchange.

On Tuesday, voters in Florida actually rejected a meaningless anti-Obamacare ballot initiative that would have attempted to prohibit individuals and employers from participating in a health exchange under the law. And when it comes to Medicaid, nearly two-thirds of white Southerners in states like Florida actually support expanding the program. But for stubborn GOP lawmakers like Scott, resisting Obamacare is a matter of partisan principle rather than following through with the policies that voters support. In the upcoming weeks, Scott’s fellow Republican governors will need to decide where they fall.

Of the least-insured metropolitan areas in the United States, seven of the top ten fall in states where the Governor has refused to accept the expansion of the Medicaid program offered up under Obamacare.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) have all said expressly that their states will not allow the expansion to take effect — despite the fact that it would offer afforable health care to citizens up to 133 percent of the poverty line who are currently uninsured and who often rely on the emergency room for their only care, racking up costs for taxpayers. But their states have some of the highest level of uninsured people overall, and are host to the least-insured American cities:

The expansion of Medicaid is actually beneficial to the states that implement it. Aside from the obvious benefit of helping more Americans stay healthy, it is projected to save states money by cutting down on the public expenses of unexpected hospital visits by sick uninsured people. And support for the expansion is wide; doctors and hospital officials believe it will hugely benefit them by taking away the burden of sudden urgent care.

The Governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval (R), has not yet committed to expanding the Medicaid program in his state. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), on the other hand, has indicated his state will participate in the expansion.