Texas rejects key provisions of Obama's signature health law

AUSTIN: Texas Governor Rick Perry said on Monday his state will not implement an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor or create a health insurance exchange, leaving the state with the highest per centage of people without health insurance outside President Barack Obama's signature law.

The announcement makes Texas the most populous state that has rejected the provisions. Some 6.2 million people are without insurance in Texas, or 24.6 per cent of the state population, the highest per centage in the nation. California has more people without insurance but a lower per centage.

Perry joined fellow Republican governors in Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Louisiana in rejecting the two provisions of the new law, according to americanhealthline.com. They hope that November elections will result in Republicans winning the White House and enough seats in Congress to repeal the law.

"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," Perry said in a statement.

He sent a letter on Monday to US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking her to relay the message to Obama that Perry opposes the provisions "because both represent brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state."

"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,'" said Perry, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January. "They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care."

CALLS MEDICAID A FAILURE Texas was one of 26 states that challenged in court the 2010 law known formally as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

If any states resisting the healthcare plan do not create insurance exchanges, the federal government plans to set them up. The exchanges are intended to extend health coverage to an additional 16 million people, while the Medicaid expansion would broaden eligibility requirements to cover another 16 million people.

The Supreme Court said Congress went too far in the part of the law that requires states to expand Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people. The court said the federal government may not take away Medicaid dollars from states that do not comply with the expansion.

On Fox News on Monday, Perry said Medicaid is a failure. "To expand this program is like adding a thousand people to the Titanic," Perry said on Fox. "You don't expand a program that is not working already. If the federal government were serious about finding solutions, what they would do is block-grant those dollars back to the states, so states could find more efficient ways to deliver healthcare."

Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuna called Perry's decision on Medicaid "cruel and negligent."

"No person with a speck of intelligence would turn down billions in federal dollars that would be a boon to our economy and help Texans," Acuna said in a statement. "Rick Perry's Texas solution is to let Texans stay ill and uninsured."

Source: http://economictimes.feedsportal.com/fy/8av2Fvy0bfHll2ii/story01.htm

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