“We applaud Governor Perry’s leadership in rejecting the implementation of ObamaCare in Texas. Access to health care, affordability of health care, and health care outcomes are tremendous concerns for all Texans – and the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid and so-called insurance exchanges are grave threats to all three.
“Medicaid in particular is a failed system, which has time and again reduced health care choices and generated poor results for ordinary Texans and their families. ObamaCare would force millions more low-income Texans into this poorly performing program that gives access to less than a third of the state’s physicians, and is often worse than no health insurance at all. Those Texans, and those families, deserve better.
“The ObamaCare insurance exchange, like the Medicaid expansion, is another false promise to the people of Texas. Instead of allowing an actual free market for individuals in health insurance, the exchange subordinates it to the demands of state and federal control, inevitably squeezing out the very sector that ought to be encouraged for a long-term solution to American health-insurance coverage.
“If the federal government wants to promote access to health care for low-income Texans, it should block-grant Medicaid to the state, so that we can develop a program that meets Texas’s needs – not D.C.’s aspirations. If the federal government wants to promote access to health insurance for all Texans, it should step back and allow an individual market in health insurance to develop.
“ObamaCare accomplishes neither of these goals. In fact, it hinders them. That’s why we support Governor Perry’s rejection of it today.”
The Honorable Arlene Wohlgemuth is the executive director and director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She served 10 years in the Texas House of Representatives, specializing in health care issues.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.
Primary website: www.TexasPolicy.com
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/TexasPublicPolicyFoundation
Twitter feed: www.Twitter.com/TPPF
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