Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Genius of Campain Trail Rick Perry Does it Again: Texas Refuses Aid for Medicaid

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Rick Perry


My home state,Texas, the land of the intelligence challenged has done it again. Perry turns down matching funds form medicaid that would have been 90%-10% ratio the lion's share paid for by the Feds.

Christian Science Monitor

July 9, 2012

Gov. Rick Perry’s declaration Monday that Texas should decline to expand Medicaid and leave creation of a health insurance exchange to the federal government could create burdens for the uninsured, local taxpayers and federal officials seeking to implement the federal health law.



But it’s far from the last word on Medicaid, a continually vexing program for lawmakers.

Soon after Perry fired off a no-thanks-ma’am letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and a statement denouncing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law as a “power grab,” health providers said they’d like to see the governor’s plan for whittling into the state’s towering uninsured problem.

The major issue is politics. Perry (this morning on local tv news channel 8 in Dallas (WFAA) called it "socialized medicine." yesterday he said that things that lead us to believe that it's medicaid failed. The reason it failed is becasue Texas never made adequate provisions to make a delivery system that works. It's a direct sabotage and this has always been the state strategy. Make the program fail in Texas then blame the feds. We see in Perry's comments the only reason when you take it all back to the root is that he wants the Dems to fail because they are his ideolgoical enemies.

Now those who can't afford health insurance will have to be forced to guy it, and they don't qualify for medicaid. now the program becomes a burden to them but if Texas had cooporated with the plan those people who have been paid for by the Federal government. Perry's rational is "we are stopping the federal government form wasting tax money and being too big." All he's really accomplishing is making the poor worse off and suffer more.

Texas ranks no 50 in the U.S. for medicaid and medical aid to poor and low and income.



National Pubic Radio July 10, 2012

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Texas is saying no to key parts of the federal health care law. Today, Governor Rick Perry said Texas will not create a state exchange for people to buy health insurance and will not expand Medicaid. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Governor Perry called both provisions a power grab, brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.

Here's Governor Perry today on Fox News.

GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: Every Texan has health care in this state. From the standpoint of being able to have access to health care, every Texan has that. How we pay for it and how we deliver it should be our decision.

BLOCK: And to talk about what this means for Texas and its uninsured population, I'm joined now by Emily Ramshaw. She's been covering this story for the Texas Tribune. Emily, welcome.

EMILY RAMSHAW: Thanks, Melissa.

BLOCK: When Governor Perry says every Texan has health care in this state, what does he mean?

RAMSHAW: That word access is a tricky word. When Perry talks about Texas, he loves to talk about MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT Southwestern in Dallas, these world class health care institutions. But that doesn't mean that all average Texans have access to that kind of care. You know, we're in a state where 25 percent of the population is uninsured. They get hardly any preventive care. And when they get very sick, they end up in the emergency room, which costs the state a ton of money.

BLOCK: Twenty-five percent, that's the highest rate of uninsured people in the country, I believe. Under the Medicaid expansion, if Texas had gone along with it, how many people would have been covered?

RAMSHAW: Under this expansion, 1.8 million more Texans would be eligible for Medicaid. But there are also many other people in Texas who are currently eligible for Medicaid who simply aren't on the rolls; either it's expired and they've forgotten to re-apply or they simply didn't realize they were eligible.

I think, you know, what some state leaders are afraid might happen is that all these people who are currently eligible but aren't enrolled, might be spurred into action by federal health reform. And so, Texas would face not just this additional 1.8 million people but, you know, up to a million other people who simply aren't enrolled yet.

BLOCK: Governor Perry says that Medicaid expansion would threaten Texas with financial ruin. How do those numbers line up, because But federal government would pay 100 percent of the Medicaid expansion cost at the outset; that then tapers down to 90 percent by 2020?

RAMSHAW: Right, between 2014 and 2019, the federal government would provide about $100 billion for Texas, at a cost to Texas of about $6 billion. So, obviously that's not pocket change. But Texas, of all the states, was going to seem to get sort of the biggest bang for its buck.

I think the bigger question here is whether in the long-term Texas is not going to take this money. I think it's sort of more likely that the federal government says, OK, Texas, what do you need to play ball here? I think you can see, down the road, a conversation happening where Texas may accept this money under a certain set of restricted rules.

BLOCK: So sort of a waiver. You're talking about Texas having leverage really to bargain with Health and Human Services?

RAMSHAW: Exactly. You know, in the last year, Texas has worked pretty closely with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to design a Medicaid waiver for Texas. So the lines of communication have been built. I think it's very likely that down road, Texas would try to find a way to accept some of these funding, but under the auspices of a Texas-designed program.

I think today what you heard was a lot of political bluster. I think what you're going to see in the next several months is really, you know, extensive conversation about the ins and outs of this money, and how to design Medicaid, how to find a way to make this work in some way for Texas.

BLOCK: We've been talking about the Medicaid expansion. But the other part of this is the health insurance exchange, for people to buy insurance. Texas says it's not going to set one up. But that means that the federal government will set one up for Texas, right?

RAMSHAW: Right, and this is very controversial for conservatives because basically what Perry is saying is we are not going to take control of this in Texas, so we are going to allow the federal government to design this program for us. I think there was one thing that wasn't mentioned today. And that is there appears to be some provisions in the law that would allow the federal government to establish exchange from the get-go, but allows Texas to petition to take control over it a little more down the line.

Texas didn't mobilize to get health insurance exchange in place. There are a lot of theories that even if Texas decided it wanted to run its own insurance exchange now, Texas doesn't have the time to get one in place before the deadline.

BLOCK: Emily Ramshaw is editor of the Texas Tribune. Emily, thanks so much.

RAMSHAW: Thanks for having me, Melissa.

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