Texas governor Rick Perry has a brilliant plan to reverse his state’s dismal insurance ranking: refuse to implement the Affordable Care Act:
TPM— After informing the Obama administration of his intentions in a letter, Perry went on Fox News to explain his position. “If anyone had any doubt, we wanted to put it clearly to bed that Texas wasn’t going to be a part of expanding socializing of our medicine,” he said. “So we’re not going to participate in any exchanges. We’re not going to expand Medicaid.
”One in four Texans are uninsured, the highest rate of any state. The Medicaid expansion would cover 49.4 percent of uninsured Texans by 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The program is broadened to cover Americans within 133 percent of the poverty line — currently the eligibility for a working Texan parent cuts off at 27 percent. The federal government will cover the full cost of the first three years and pay 90 percent thereafter.
It’s pure grandstanding. Perry, or who ever is in office when the ACA kicks in, will find some excuse to accept the money that comes with it. Otherwise, local businesses will be out millions and millions of dollars, leaving local companies incredibly pissed off at the powers that be. Yeah Rick, that’s a brilliant move, you’ll sure show em!
Your headline is redundant.
And on a more constructive note, I’ll just mention that Perry’s idiocy is no greater than the governor of my fair state, Florida. These guys are willing to forgo millions of dollars that would help the people of their states simply because it comes from Democratic legislation. Rick Scott not only is doing the same thing as Perry, but a few years ago (?) Scott turned down millions of dollars of Fed. money for a high speed rail.
I’ll predict that if (FSM forbid) Romney wins, and the same money, for the same reason, is made available to these states, that it’ll be accepted.
Perry is a tough Vaudville act to follow, but Rick Scott is quite a piece of work too.
Twit. Do these people even know what “socialism” means?
I’m not sure that Perry will actually take the money. The GOP fetish for ideological purity, enforced by the fear of being ‘Primaried’, talk radio, and the extremism of conservative deep pockets, is quite strong and their loyalty to the overall good of the nation and the lower 99% of the people is quite quite weak. A willingness to punishing and exploit the 99% is considered a conservative virtue and sign of seriousness. It gets dressed up as a firm but fair willingness to accept the economic realities and ‘make the hard choices’.
Looks to me like the flogging of the working people and poor will continue until the mood of the wealthy improves.
I read the letter (or so it claimed) and he even called it “Obamacare” in that. the whole thing made him look pretty ridiculous
I thought Perry took the stimulus money he wouldn’t have anything to do with, and just used it to help plug his deficit. (Kind of like John McCain not forgoing his social security check.)