The Brief: Top Texas News for July 10, 2012
The Big Conversation:
Texas has gained control of the latest political football to emerge from the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark health care ruling: Medicaid expansion.
As the Tribune reported, Perry announced Monday that Texas will neither expand its Medicaid rolls nor establish a state health insurance exchange — key tenets of the federal health care law that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month.
The move makes Texas the largest state so far whose governor has rejected the Medicaid expansion. Though the high court ruled that the federal government may expand Medicaid to its liking, justices said the ...
Comments (19)
Sunny Conditt Williams via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Here we go again, PerryPolitics!
Ron Blancarte via Texas Tribune on Facebook
"I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state"
Of course not. Rick doesn't need "socialized healthcare" to bankrupt the state, when he has two-thousand other policies that he can bankrupt the state with.
Jim Hsu via Texas Tribune on Facebook
taking care of your state's poor with the fed's money. Yep, if Perry can't even do that because he wants to sound and look tough, he shouldn't be in the public service line of work. What a doucher.
Brian Ortego via Texas Tribune on Facebook
After two decades of downsizing and breaking the back of skilled Americans, it looks like the biggest union of all is about to get broken, the AMA. It's a shame that this race to the bottom is occurring after generations of working Americans have worked so hard to improve their quality of life. The one common thread is the ineffective leadership of our U.S. Congress over the last sixty years!
Jalapeño Schwartz via Texas Tribune on Facebook
They make it impossible to care for medicaid!
David Spratt
The answer according to many commenting is to add several more million patients to the roles of the few doctors that see medicaid patients. More and more doctors will opt out of providing care to medicaid recipients into the future. Rather than address the needs of this group,,, the entire system has been turned upside down,,, even the parts that worked for most people who have insurance. The needs of the 25% have overruled the will of the 75%.
Everyone will have healthcare under Obama. Hurrah hurrah , three cheers for the emperor.. Wait a minute,,,,,,,, who is going to pay for all those people who have no money or refuse to buy it themselves????? Bet none of them ever thought about that !!!!
All these people who are expected to " Voluntarily" buy health insurance are either A: Young ,,,B: Poor having no funds at all or C: unable to afford it. You can count out all of them. The young will pay the fine rather than buy insurance ,,, it is much cheaper. The poor and the people who can not afford it now still will not be able to afford it.
So what has been accomplished other than giving government another reason to hire tens of thousands of workers,,, increasing the power of the IRS to forcefully collect your money from you, and disrupt everyone's life who does have insurance now??? Yes this is a very carefully thought out and well crafted plan. Too bad we had to pass it before we found out what was in it.
Lan Bentsen
The Governor of Texas announces that he would rather see a billion Texas taxpayer dollars match fund New York Medicaid 9:1 than use those same dollars to care for 1.5 million Texans who need care. How unfortunate for both Texas taxpayers and their fellow Texans in need of care.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Perry and his puppet masters, the Texas Public Policy Foundation have never known what it is like to be without insurance. They've never had a wheezing relative or a sick child they could not care for. How does a health care exchange in which private insurance companies have to uniformly disclose coverage and cost of coverage, thereby competing for customers "socialize" medicine. Insurance companies don't want to compete. They want to maintain the crony capitalism of Perry's Texas and continue to charge among the highest health insurance premiums in the country. Perry talks about the "free market" and competition, but it's really all about back room deals and political contributions. Actually pursuing government policies that would provide for the general welfare of the citizens is an inconvenient thought. Perhaps some day Texas will wake up to how we've been screwed by this idiot.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Charity is not the proper function of government .. Texas doesn't have people dying in the streets...hospitals cannot refuse to treat...the federal govt telling Texas how to handle the poor and uninsured (they are not the same thing ) has always been a bad idea and all they states would be better off today if we never started down the road of allowing the Feds to dictate how we handle this and other state issues
Ron Blancarte via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori - you're view is a little misguided. You say that hospitals can turn people away. You're right. But guess who gets stuck with that bill? Us tax payers. And it is at a state level that is already burdened with a lack of funding.
You do realize that Obamacare, for all that you find fault with it, really is nothing more than telling people - take care of your own business. Get health insurance and stop putting the burden on the public. And it helps out by giving money to states to get low income people on medicare. When they are GIVING you the money, why turn it down?
Adele Roberson
Martin11 reporting four days ago in the Daily Beast.
I am German. I was born here, I live here, I never visited the states (I am sure I will some time, just not now) and, to tell the truth, I have NOT read the documents of Obamacare or the papers of other politicians who want to oppose the idea.
But I live in a country, that has a system of social welfare (including health insurance, unemployment, annuity and others) - not as an option but as a duty. That is: If you live here you have to pay for this system. And if you live here, the system has to pay for the necessary costs. Nevertheless we have a free market, a stable economy, a conservative chancellor, a small communist minority, a small rate of unemployment and I can not see the point some of you want to make. Here these systems work verfy well and have for a long time.
Germany came out of the last crisis much more efficiently than most other countries in the world - so how do you come to the idea that if you adopt some of our ideas everything will go down?
For instance: Some of you argued, that a family that wants to go to the doctor for everything, even if there is no real reason, will raise the costs for everybody else.
That is not true. The family might possibly try to do that once - and it works. They come back the next day and the doctor will ask them - politely - why they come back. They try it a third time and the doctor tells them to go away. So they try it with another doctor - and will have to pay for changing the doctor in the process. If they want to have the luxury to hop from doctor to doctor the insurance will not pay all of that. If it is necessary (the first one does not do eyes, for example) than the first doctor will give them a paper that says: You can go to the specialist - and so the insurance has to pay for the specialist. Yes, doctors have to be responsible and patients have to be responsible, too. But the system can take care of that: If you show a lack of responsibility the system will not pay everything. Easy. Nothing to worry about.
Or unemployment: You pay for the insurance and if you are unemployed the system will pay a part of your old salary for a short time while you look for another job. That is not the case if you have been thrown out because you did stupid things like stealing money from your boss. But if your firm went bankrupt the system pays say 60% - that is not sufficient for a long break and it will not be paid forever, but it does help in the first months of unemployment.
The efficiency of the system is, that you do not have to spend all of your free time worrying what will happen next, but that you can keep rather cool if anything happens that has not been in your plans. You can start to build a house because you know: Even if you become unemployed, even if one of your children has an accident, you will be able to pay for the house as long as you start looking for a new job in time. We do have much smaller / shorter strikes than other countries, because it does not make any sense to stay away from your job to fight for anything if you have everything you need. If you do not have to loose anything, aggressive riots can become popular - we do not have them here (at least not by your standards).
And as I said before: We are a free country, you are a free country. If you want to have your system without any changes, we will happily (no, that is not true) look as you continue to go down.
Oh - and one last word about Europe / the European Union: Some of you seem to think, that the EU will go down. I don't think so. We have a problem with uniting our very different systems, that is clear to everybody. When you had the problem of uniting your country you fought a bloody war. We have a set-back, not a minor one, but nothing to worry about. And no, we are rich, but we are not rich enough to pay all of Europe out. But that is not necessary. We are not alone. Scandinavia, the Benelux, Austria, France, Estonia and others are nearly as stable as we are, just economical smaller. The EU is more stable than the states and will soon be back to competing in the highest ranks. Americans, in my view, must learn to get along and to work with each other every day for the betterment of their people and their country. If Canada can do ,America must learn to do this.
Leon Drozd
I hear that a large number of veterans are now turning to the VA system because of the high price of private care and insurance, which then places heavier burdens upon the Federal government.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
GIVING Texas the money comes with all kinds of directives and strings attached....Washington telling Texas how to deliver healthcare to it's citizens. Your argument seems to be that Washington knows how to best handle this...and not our state and local elected officials.
Jim Arnold
Perry is a total loser.
Juanita Spears via Texas Tribune on Facebook
A Death Sentence for poor Working Families
Juanita Spears via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Im dependent on Insulin and struggle just to make ends meet.
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori, Texas govt. does not seem to be doing a very good job now are they? Defunding PP is just one example because of their political/religious agenda. Get religion out of healthcare, state and federal govt./politics NOW.
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Ron, the GOP/Tea Party spread tons of LIES about ObamaCare and some Texans are too stupid to research for themselves. Voting against their own best interests. Take the time to read this and find out the truth. http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/full.html
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori, Charities don't seem to be doing such a good job of handling the poor, elderly, children and disabled either. Yes, it is governments job to take care of the least in their society both at the state and federal level. Did you miss this in the U.S. Constitution? * We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."