Perry: Texas will not implement key elements of health care reform

[boxman15]

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."

Read more: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-health-resources/medicaid/perry-tx-wont-implement-key-elements-health-reform/

To all rational Texans, and especially to those rational Texans without care, hang in there. Hopefully as the law is implemented elsewhere and becomes more popular, your batshit insane governor will come to his senses or you'll be able to get rid of him.

[LynneSin]

1. Another governor of a state with almost 20% of it's citizens without healthcare

So when that 20% who doesn't have healthcare gets sick and finally does something about it they will end up in the emergency room. And since they can't afford their bills it'll go back to the state to cover it.

[HopeHoops]

2. How long before the South fucks up again with another attempt to leave the union?

[Drale]

3. Where does this arrogance come from

apparently in their eyes the office of Governor is higher then the office of President.

[coalition_unwilling]

4. When does Obama get to send in the 82nd Airborne? - n/t

[Arkana]

5. Little Ricky forgot that the Feds will just elbow his useless ass aside

and set it up for him should he refuse.

[still_one]

6. It would be nice to believe that those rational texans would vote the sob out /nt

[backscatter712]

7. Let's just call Rick Perry what he is: A MURDERER.

He's depriving his state's citizens of health care for no reason other than spite, and because of that, probably hundreds of Texans will die preventable deaths as a result.

[emulatorloo]

8. Won't the Feds set up the exchanges anyway?

[yellowcanine]

9. "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors..." Only Rick Perry would brag about saying

"me too!" a day late and a dollar short.