The quality of healthcare in Texas, even in some rural areas, is nothing to complain about. One of the downsides, and this is happening in healthcare across America, is the dehumanization of health care. Dehumanization and industrialization of the patient-doctor relationship.
In Texas, though, it's about the availability of health care. Here, dehumanization is most notable in the territory where those without insurance and the money to buy either insurance or pay for care directly reside. Rick Perry has made their plight considerably worse and, in spite of the efforts of his political backers, he can't cover this up. Here's the reality:
Texas Medicaid is austere — many low-income Texans who might qualify for public insurance in other states do not qualify in Texas.
Just 50 percent of Texans get insurance through their employers, 10 percentage points below the national average. And though health insurance premiums in Texas are slightly below the national average, they have nearly doubled in the last decade. Despite suggestions that Texas’ illegal immigrants are to blame for the sky-high rate of the uninsured, they make up just one-sixth of the total, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, or C.P.P.P.
...“Year after year, session after session, they’ve looked at health care not as an investment in our community but as something they resent doing, like a social welfare item,” said Kim Ross, a health policy consultant based in Austin.
According to Mr. Perry’s staff, Texas provides an adequate safety net to those “truly in need.” But in 2003, in the face of a huge budget shortfall, he supported the Legislature’s decision to slash the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, eliminating coverage for more than 200,000 children, or 40 percent of those enrolled. (It took seven years to restore CHIP enrollment to its pre-2003 level.)
In another effort to cut costs that year, the state authorized privatizing the eligibility and enrollment systems for CHIP, Medicaid and food stamps, leading to mistaken rejections and much-delayed services. The projected savings never materialized, and the state was forced to cancel the contract. ...NYT
Notably, Governor Perry tried to get the federal government to pay to insure "two million working-poor Texans'" health costs. His scam was turned down by the Bush administration. Next came the "Healthy Texas" initiative, a great program expanding access to health insurance. But it touches at most a quarter of the people needing help and doesn't change the plight of the working poor in this state.
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