Advocates for Medicaid funding are turning up the heat on Republicans to accept federal funding for roughly 800,000 low-income Floridians.

It's a moment that looked all but impossible just a couple of years ago: a unanimous vote by the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee to finally take $51 billion from Washington.

The expansion would provide health care to more than 800,000 Floridians who don't have it right now.

What allowed Republicans to move forward is the plan they've crafted, which would use that money to buy private policies outside of traditional Medicaid, which they argue is broken.

"Let's not get caught up in some of the politics associated with this and realize that, I think, today this Senate and our Senate president has made it very clear that we are in the business of taking care of those most vulnerable residents in our state by affording them access to affordable health care," Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, said.

For all of the optimism in the Senate about the plan, Medicaid expansion has always died once it reaches the Florida House of Representatives.

House Republican leaders argue taking that money could put taxpayers in a bind if the federal government doesn't uphold their end of the bargain, but now there's a complicating factor.

In what amounts to a penalty for not expanding Medicaid, the Obama administration is now threatening to revoke $1.3 billion in funding for low-income, uninsured hospital patients.

That development would throw Florida's budget into the red and make it all but impossible for the Republican party to pass its number one priority of tax cuts.

As a result, House Republicans are under new pressure to come to the table.

"We do not plan to do anything on Medicaid expansion," House Speaker Steve Crisafullil said. "I am a 'never say never' kind of guy. Certainly anything can come about that provides opportunity."

House leaders say they still have no intention of passing Medicaid expansion. The Tea Party-aligned Americans for Prosperity is criticizing the Senate committee, saying it voted to "punish healthy Floridians and taxpayers."