Can't Get Any Meaner Than Tx Republicans

Texas Republican legislators have either lost their damn minds or they are the meanest people in this country.   As the chart above shows, Texas is already one of the stingiest states in the Union when it comes to Medicaid.   If a family of three makes about $9,200 a year, they are deemed ineligible for Medicaid insurance because they make too much money.

Now anyone who thinks a family of three can even pay rent and buy groceries for $9,200 a year is crazy, and yet Texas legislators think they should also be able to purchase private insurance with that gigantic salary.   That is embarrassing enough to decent-minded Texans, but now the Republican legislators (and Republican governor Rick Perry) want to drop out of the Medicaid program altogether.

Texas has a budget shortfall of about $25 billion dollars for the next biennium.   They must either raise some taxes or slash that amount out of the Texas budget when they meet next January.   And the Republicans, who control both houses in the Texas legislature, are saying they can save money by dropping out of the federal Medicaid program.

The cost for Medicaid in Texas for 2011 is $24.7 billion dollars.   At least $16.6 billion of that tab is paid by the federal government.   That means the state would have to come up with $8.1 billion dollars to cover it's share of Medicaid.  

The Republican legislators are saying they expect many more people to become eligible for Medicaid in the next few years because of the new health care law and call it an unfunded mandate (one of their favorite terms).   But that's just not true.   While more people will qualify and the federal money will increase by about 39% to cover it, the state portion is expected to only increase by 3% -- a small price to pay to cover many more Texans with health insurance.

The Republican legislators are saying they can develop a state program that would cover those needing Medicaid coverage, and do it cheaper than the current Medicaid program.   To save money they would have to spend less than $8 billion to do what is now being done for over $24 billion (and do it without any federal money).   That would be quite a feat since Medicaid already pays so little that many Texas doctors already refuse to accept Medicaid patients.  

That simply can't be done without kicking millions off the Medicaid rolls.   Texas already has about 26% of its population without health insurance (more than any other state) and dropping out of Medicaid would drastically increase that number.   These people will have no option but to flood the already-crowded hospital emergency rooms for medical treatment.   And that doesn't come without costs.   Hospital districts will have to raise taxes and hospitals will raise costs for other patients.   As much as these legislators want it to be, there just is no free ride with medical care.

This is just a stupid and unworkable idea, and it will probably hurt the Texas economy since nearly $17 billion federal dollars will not be spent in Texas.   As Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities says,   "You can't just pull $17 billion out of our healthcare system and have everything be hunky-dory."

These Republican legislators know they cannot improve health care in Texas by pulling the state out of the Medicaid system.   They are just playing to their teabagger base by thumbing their noses at the federal government, and they're willing to throw millions of poor people under the bus to do it.   That's not good economics.   It's not even conservative economics.   It's just plain old meanness.