How Medicaid Abuses Vulnerable Texans

The most recent issue of Texas Monthly contains a tiresome, straw-man, filled attack against Governor Perry's refusal to comply with Obama's Medicaid Expansion; sample quote:

Medicaid covers one in eight Texans at costs lower than private insurance, and without it our chart-topping percentage of the uninsured -- nearly 25 percent of Texans lack insurance -- would increase to nearly 33 percents of the population, including the millions of children who make up the majority of Texas Medicaid enrollees.

 Texas Public Policy Foundation's John Daniel Davidson issues a suburb online response today, money quote:

[Texas Monthly Writer Michael] Ennis thinks Perry should dump more money into this mess and hope for the best.  Expanding Medicaid, he said, would provide coverage to millions of uninsured Texas workers, 'probably helping Texas more than any state.'  Leaving aside for a moment that it would actually be a net loss for the state, an uncomfortable implication lurks in the background: private health insurance and the world's best health care are only good for the upper and middle class, while Medicaid is good enough for the poor.

The point about how Medicaid traps vulnerable citizens in a predatory, substandard system is one all Texans would be wise to remember, consider the following:



Highlights:

• Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary crowns have been drilled into vulnerable Texas children.

• "My son looked like a robot."

• Medicaid pays $157 per cap.

• Harming thousands of Texas children while costing taxpayers millions.

• $100 million on steel crowns alone in Texas in 2011.

• Why do kids in Ft. Worth need an average of 8 crowns per child when kids in Lubbock only need two?!?

This is a moral and financial outrage that curtails the freedom and self-sufficiency of both Medicaid recipients and Texas taxpayers; this cannot continue.

Socialized medicine, like all government encroachment, attracts profiteers.  The 83rd Texas Legislature has no business authorizing ANY Medicaid funding until it gets to the bottom of this abuse.  But, hey, why should Texas Monthly examine the details of a predatory Medicaid system when there's a Republican Governor to bash?!?