“I disagree with Governor Perry rejecting outright the expansion of Medicaid and the offer of the federal government to pay 100% for the first three years and then 90% afterwards.
The Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion is constitutional and we need to find ways to give Texans access to healthcare. We have 6.2 million uninsured people in Texas — that’s 25% of our population.
At the end of the day, our Texas taxpayers are already indirectly footing the bill for uncompensated care through emergency rooms. Those are our tax dollars that we send up to Washington, D.C., so we need to look at ways of making this work for Texas. The state needs to carefully study the Medicaid expansion to minimize the cost to taxpayers before rejecting the federal funding outright.”