Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said in an early morning announcement.
“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab,” he said in a statement. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.”
Perry’s office sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday morning asserting his opposition, both to accepting more than a hundred million federal dollars over the next several years to put more poor Texas adults onto Medicaid, and to creating an Orbitz-style online insurance marketplace for consumers.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states — even Texas, which has the country’s highest rate of the uninsured — may not be punished for opting out of the Medicaid. The insurance exchange is not optional; if Texas doesn’t devise its own, the feds will establish a one-size-fits-all program for the state.
“If anyone was in doubt, we in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare,” Perry said in a statement. “I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government.”
The governor will appear on Fox News at 10:30 a.m. to talk more about his decision.
Perry’s Monday announcement follows word last week from the Health and Human Services Commission that the decision on expanding Medicaid would be left to lawmakers in the 2013 Legislature, which begins in January. The Medicaid expansion, which would cost the already strapped state budget about $6 billion between 2014 and 2019, isn’t supposed to start until 2014.
It also follows several conversations his office had with medical and hospital associations last week — including groups that would much prefer to see Medicaid expanded. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have suggested that, barring a statewide Medicaid expansion, they might give regions or local hospital districts the green light to try to negotiate with the federal government for their own communities.
It would be a big loss for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if Texas, the state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents, didn’t partake in the Medicaid expansion. That could give state leaders quite a bit of leverage to try to bargain with Washington for a waiver — one that required Medicaid enrollees to have more skin in the game, for example.
But Perry’s statement on Monday morning didn’t leave much room for negotiation — at least if it’s under “Obamacare.”
“I look forward to implementing health care solutions that are right for the people of Texas,” Perry wrote in the letter to Sebelius. “I urge you to support me in that effort. In the meantime, [health reform’s] unsound encroachments will find no foothold here.”
EMILY RAMSHAW reports for The Texas Tribune where this story was originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between the Tribune and the San Marcos Mercury.
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Great Slick Rick, What are your solutions that are right for Texans? As far as I can tell the only Texans you give two licks about are the ones that line your pockets.
I am so sorry that Rick is governor of this state.
This is how Obama has described health care insurance exchanges. Doesn’t it sound horrible?
“…a market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that’s best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”
As a small business owner who buys his health insurance on the private market, I was really counting on a health insurance exchange coming to Texas. I guess Rick Perry doesn’t much care about me or my small business after all.
To me the question is not so much about whether a public option would be a better (read: cheaper) alternative, it’s whether the government should be interjecting itself into the private markets in such a way. I happen to think that managing the US’s health care system lies outside the scope of the duties of our government. But then I think the government overreaches its actual responsibilities a little more each election.
While we are on the topic of a public option being ‘better’…..when you think of how this will pan out, think of how the government has done in its efforts to take over retirement (social security) and charity (welfare) from the private sector. An honest assessment of the tremendous failures in both of these programs should have anyone thinking twice about clamoring for the government to take over yet another major part of our economy.
Dano,
Very seldom do I ever disagree with you, and this is NOT one of those times. I can’t believe what our government is trying to control in our everyday lives. I would like someone to name one government program that is revenue neutral.
I don’t think that most people are really looking at the big picture. How does anyone think that we are going to pay for this program in Texas? Do you really believe that the fed will re-pay us with the country’s debt? No, it will be a raise in property taxes and state, county, city, and gas taxes that will have to be raised to pay to put this in place. There are a whole bunch of ideas out there that would bring everyone’s costs down, and I for one would like to try a few of these before they raise everyone’s taxes.