Texas: Sixth State To Say No Thanks To Medicaid Expansion

image
Published: 10 Jul, 2012
Updated: 13 Oct, 2022
4 min read

medicaid-expansion

Governor Rick Perry of Texas joins a list of growing states who say they will refuse to implement Medicaid expansion in their states. The one-time presidential hopeful stated yesterday, “If anyone was in doubt, we in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.”

Gov. Rick Perry’s decision makes Texas the sixth state to opt out of Medicaid expansion so far. Texas joins Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Wisconsin in using their Supreme Court-given right to say no to the funding.

The Supreme Court ruled to uphold most of Obama’s Affordable Care Act provisions, but struck down the part of the law requiring states to expand Medicaid eligibility.

Perry’s office sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathlen Sebelius making his opposition to the Bill official. In turn, by opting out of Medicaid expansion, Perry chose on behalf of Texas not to accept “more than a hundred million federal dollars over the next several years to put more poor Texas adults onto Medicaid."

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 1.4 million uninsured Texans would have received Medicaid coverage if Gov. Rick Perry had made the decision to participate in Medicaid expansion. This would cut the number of uninsured people in Texas by 49.4% by 2019.

Gov. Rick Perry said in his statement regarding his decision:

"… 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. I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab. 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."

According to the Congressional Budget Offices, “if all states went ahead with Medicaid expansion, it would increase state spending on the program by $73 billion by 2022 – the equivalent of a 2.8% increase in what states would have spent on Medicaid from 2014 to 2022 in the absence of health reform.”

IVP Donate

Out of the six states that have already publicly opted out of Medicaid expansion, three of them have uninsured rates higher than the national average, which is 16%. Louisiana: 17% uninsured, South Carolina: 19% uninsured, and Florida: 21% uninsured.

If more governors continue to opt out, or threaten to opt out, of the Medicaid expansion, the poorest Americans will suffer most. According to charts from Washington Post’s Wonk Blog, “People who earn less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Line, which is approximately $11,170 per individual, are ineligible for tax credits to purchase health insurance.”

Wonk Blog also stated in another article referencing Medicaid expansion that not only poor Americans would suffer, but also poor, childless adults are most in danger.

“Childless adults tend to have even lower eligibility in state Medicaid programs. Forty-three states do not cover single adults at any level of the poverty line. If those states opt out of the Medicaid expansion, adults without children would find themselves in a sort of donut hole: Ineligible for Medicaid but also too poor to qualify for federal subsidies.”

The Urban Institute cited under the current system, “state and local governments help hospitals offset the cost of care they provide to uninsured patients who can’t pay for medical care — paying about $10.5 billion, or 18.5%, of the cost of uncompensated care.” Thus, if Medicaid covered more patients, those high costs that state and local governments offset, would decrease.

The six governors that have opted out of Medicaid expansion arguably did so for ideological reasons. There is no denying that expanding Medicaid may cost more for states upfront, but the long-term outcomes of doing so prove to actually save states more money in the future, increase state budgets, and avoid increasing rates of uninsured Americans.

Ten states and the District of Columbia have chosen to participate in the expansion, which includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, and Washington.

Ironically states that have already opted out of Medicaid expansion would have proven to be the highest beneficiaries. Kaiser Family Foundation concluded “the Medicaid expansion in the new law would cut South Carolina’s uninsured rate among eligible adults by 56.4%. This would be the fourth largest drop of any state in the nation.”

Let Us Vote : Sign Now!

Latest articles

Marijuana plant.
Why the War on Cannabis Refuses to Die: How Boomers and the Yippies Made Weed Political
For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American physicians freely prescribed cannabis to treat a wide range of ailments. But by the mid-twentieth century, federal officials were laying the groundwork for a sweeping criminal crackdown. Cannabis would ultimately be classified as a Schedule I substance, placed alongside heroin and LSD, and transformed into a political weapon that shaped American policy for the next six decades....
30 Jun, 2025
-
2 min read
Donald Trump standing behind presidential podium and in front of two American flags.
Has Trump Made His Case for the Nobel Peace Prize?
A news item in recent days that was overshadowed in the media by SCOTUS and the One Big Beautiful Budget Bill was a US-brokered peace agreement that was signed between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – which if it holds will end a conflict between the two countries that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of people....
30 Jun, 2025
-
7 min read
Picture of skyscraper in New York behind a bridge.
Knives Come Out Against Reform at NYC CRC Hearing as Independents Rise
Last week in Staten Island, the NYC Charter Revision Commission held its next-to-last public hearing. As Commissioner Diane Savino commented, addressing NYC's closed primary system “is the single biggest issue we’ve heard this year.”...
30 Jun, 2025
-
3 min read