Texas Governor Says ‘No’ to Medicaid Expansion under ACA

Fresh off the news of the breadth of health care delivery in that state, Texas is telling the HHS that it will opt-out of insurance exchanges as part of the ACA. Gov. Rick Perry detailed this in a letter to Sec’y Sebelius.

Fresh off the news of the breadth of health care delivery in that state, Texas is telling the HHS that it will opt-out of insurance exchanges as part of the ACA. Gov. Rick Perry detailed this in a letter to Sec’y Sebelius.

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.

You may have noticed that, more significantly, Perry is opting out of Medicaid expansion under the law – a provision now allowable under the recent Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the ACA. What is crystal clear is that (1) the feds will have to intervene to set up exchanges in that state, and (2), more significantly, Texas will have to do without new Medicaid funding under the law. What remains to be seen is how this strategy will play out in a state where more than 1 in 4 is uninsured.  Texas now joins three other states (LA, SC, FL) – where the percentage of the uninsured exceeds the national average — in bluntly opposing “Obamacare”. (FYI: Four states which have already accepted expansion of Medicaid funding are regions in which the percentages of uninsured are the lower than the nationwide average of 16 percent. – Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington state.)