Perry joins fellow gulf shrimp Rick Scott of Florida, along with Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, in rejecting the Medicaid expansion provision, which ups the threshold for Medicaid from 37% of the poverty line to 133%. If implemented, the expansion would insure 49.4% of uninsured Texas by 2019.
"I'm always intrigued with the concept that there’s free money out there," Perry said on Fox News Monday. "We don't trust this administration, and we don't trust Washington, D.C. to be able to deliver health care in our states."
We'll skip over the free money part—one of the primary functions of health care reform is to lower health care costs overall by increasing preventative care, among other features, thus making Medicaid a more solvent program in the longterm, so there's no free lunch here—and move on to the fact that Perry's statement implies that Texas is doing an at least adequate job of delivering that health care.
Instead, Texas is already the last in the nation in insurance coverage, with more than 25% of residents uninsured, most of them poor, and Texas is last in the nation in quality of health care services. And while the state can't fall any cardinally lower, it can make life infinitely more miserable for lower income familes: Texas is also last in benefits for public employees and last in wages, which means not only are there more poor people with less access to health care, but they have less money to procure it on their own. How Perry thinks these people are paying for their health care is beyond me. They're certainly not getting it from the state of Texas, which faced a $28 billion shortfall last legislative session and has already lost a substantial amount of federal Medicaid funding as punishment for its gratuitous defunding of Planned Parenthood.
I suppose Perry has nothing to lose at this point. After his trainwreck of a presidential campaign, he's toxically unpopular in Texas, and unlikely to run for governor a fourth time. While the Texas Miracle has received some substantive critiques, Perry will still leave office under a halo of economic growth. If he hopes to further his political career, as, I dunno, the head of the RNC, or simply the steward of a Super PAC, further burnishing his conservative credentials wouldn't hurt. If hundreds of thousands of people are left uninsured in the process, what's it to him? Perry will be safely ensconced in the president's office of A&M by the time the consequences of his policies materialize.
But thumbing his nose at the gummiment is more than a canny political move for Perry; on some indigenous level, catharsis is at work here. Rejecting federal authority, even if it is badly-needed health funding, is metonymic of secession, allowing Perry to activate the vestigial outlaw vibe that still gets watered in Texas exurbs, while inciting his critics into backhand-praising his rebel ways. The more Perry causes someone like Gail Collins to sputter, the better.
But still, there's still no reading statements like this—
We've got some of the finest health care in the world. So the idea that this federal government, which doesn’t like Texas to begin with, to pick and choose and come up with some data and say somehow Texas has the worst health care system in the world is just fake and false on its face.
—without comprehending the extent to which Perry too easily gets away with using inflated Texas pride as a cover while he subjects a quarter of his constituents to an entirely preventable level of poverty and illness. Texas' ills are self-inflicted, avoidable, and entirely the result of an ideology that dismantles civic society under the banner of fiscal responsibility. How long can Perry's drawl sell that?
Brandt Hardin :
Republicans would have us believe Obamacare is bad for America. Is there any doubt that a Romney administration would favor the rich and increase the income gap in our country while leaving millions of our citizens uninsured and unprotected? Mitt is a pariah in Mormon Clothing and will stop at nothing to expand an empire of greed for the rich in this country. Can his sacred Mormon underwear gain him enough donations to buy this election? See for yourself as Mitt dons his tighty-whities sent from the Good Lord Himself at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/05/mitt-romneys-magic-mormon-underwear.html
July 9, 2012
Rachel White:
I suppose Perry's solution for his state's uninsured citizens is to call a day of prayers like he did for rain. Problem is, the rain never came. OOOoops!!
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