Rick Perry’s Refusal to Expand Texas’ Medicaid Program Could Result In Thousands of Deaths

You could say that the idea for Medicaid began in Texas. In the late 1920s, a middle-school teacher named Lyndon B. Johnson saw the crushing poverty and inequality his Mexican-American students faced in the small South Texas town of Cotulla. Nearly 40 years later, then-President Johnson declared a War on Poverty and, in 1965, signed the bill that created Medicaid—a program funded jointly by the states and the federal government to provide health insurance to low-income Americans. It was part of his vision for a “Great Society,” which he boldly defined as “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.”

Johnson probably couldn’t have imagined the program’s impact. In the past 47 years, Medicaid has provided medical care to hundreds of millions of Americans—including low-income children, the elderly, disabled, and pregnant women—and has saved millions of lives. More than 50 million are currently enrolled.

In Johnson’s home state, however, the commitment to Medicaid has always been lackluster at best. Texas’ Medicaid program spends less than the national average per enrollee, and reimburses doctors, hospitals and other providers less than the national average. In many areas, the Texas program pays for only the minimum standards required by the federal government. One in four Texans—6.1 million people—lack health insurance, the highest percentage in the country.

Now another Democratic president wants to expand Medicaid, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” Even a modest expansion would mean that an estimated 1.5 million working adults who earn 133 percent of the federal poverty level or less (about $14,856 a year for an individual) could have health insurance starting in 2014.

Much more at http://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perrys-refusal-to-expand-texas-medicaid-program-could-result-in-thousands-of-deaths/ .