Texas fights new health law
Texas is home to 6.1 million uninsured residents, so the state’s officials are expected to receive a federal health care law with open arms, because it will redirect billions of dollars from Washington to Austin and pay the health care bill to millions of low income Texans.
On the contrary, the Republican political leadership has received the law with evident hostility and did not get involved to help put it into effect, so the policy makers will have to work on their own, with no help from the governor, attorney general and ranking legislators. The same response was given in many of the 21 states targeted by the health reform, but they will have to follow it even if they filled lawsuits arguing that the reform does not act constitutionality. In Austin, the federal health care law is beginning to be enacted although Governor Rick Perry has declared that he will fight against it with every means, because he considers it as being socialist. In the same time, office workers apply for federal grants and work together with the Obama administration, while the Austin Attorney General, Greg Abbott, is trying to fight the law in court. John M. Zerwas, a Republican State Representative who is against the law but is also the leader a House committee that is set to maximize the law’s benefits to Texas, says that there are a lot of laws that he does not agree with, but they have to comply with it for the sake of the state.
The antipathy for the health care law lies in the deeply conservative politics and the Austin leaders fear the fiscal threat that comes along with it which is estimated to a cost of 27 billion dollars in the ten years to come after the law takes effect in 2014. The cost of Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, is shared by the states and the new health law will extend the program’s benefits and eligibility to childless adults, too. The Obama administration officials declared that they are impressed by the fact that states that are officially against the law, like Texas for example, comply with and take advantage of the law benefits. That dynamic of the law will be observed along the way, while the states will decide how much they will allow the Medicaid expansion beginning in 2014, when most Americans will be required to obtain coverage. Texas is one of the most restrictive Medicaid eligibility areas, because of its restrictive application requirements, old computers, staff not prepared to deal with the new law and difficulties in signing up children born to illegal immigrants.
