Leon County Commissioner Akin Akinyebe, left, and Rep. Alan Williams on Tuesday / Photo: Gray Rohrer

With debt ceiling negotiations going on in Washington and the political positioning for 2012 already beginning, Florida Democrats and interest groups have a clear message for candidates and incumbents: Don’t touch Medicare.

“Keep your hands off our Medicare,” said Barbara DeVane, state secretary of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, an advocacy group with 216,000 members.

Flanked by Tallahassee Democrats, DeVane held a press conference Tuesday to announce her group’s intention of visiting the Florida offices of members of Congress who voted in April for a plan to reform the health-care entitlement program for seniors.

All of Florida’s 19 Republicans in Congress voted in favor of the budget plan put forth by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. The Democratically-controlled Senate refused to take it up.

Ryan’s plan included a fundamental transformation of Medicare, keeping benefits intact for those who are 55 years old or older, but transitioning to a voucher program for beneficiaries in 10 years’ time, as opposed to the current fee-for-service health-care delivery method.

Democrats nationwide have scoffed at the plan, and said that it was tantamount to “ending Medicare.” Rep. Alan Williams, D-Tallahassee, repeated the theme Tuesday, but also hit out at Republicans for efforts to thwart the Affordable Care Act, the federal overhaul of health care that President Barack Obama signed into law last year.

“No matter how many ways (Republicans) try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which is the law of the land, they are essentially saying the same thing to millions of Floridians -- you are on your own,” Williams said.

Along with other entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid, Medicare takes up 43 percent of the federal budget. Conservatives, deficit hawks, and smaller government advocates are keen on cutting the programs, but Democrats and progressives want to prevent any fundamental changes to entitlements, if not expand them.

“And a lot of people like to refer to us as greedy old geezers, but we do care about our families and our children and our grandchildren and other people. In fact, the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans -- we have been fighting for years to extend Medicare to all Americans, from the womb to the tomb. That is our dream, that one day we will have that for all of our members of our family,” DeVane said.