Gov. Perry Wants to Eliminate Medicaid and CHIPs (Child Health Program) in Texas

what does he care about the poor sick kids... sheesh, come on!

Right there's an untapped market for ONE of his buddies.... one way or another as long as pesky washington would mind their own business!

I wonder how long before we hear more secession talk. My guess would be right around January 2013, if not sooner.

 

Slightly off-topic: I went to a meeting today with administrators at my kid's private school. She is in kindergarten. They said they will be adopting a new set of standards called "common core standards." They currently use national standards, having abandoned Texas standards years ago for being too low. They said on Texas standards, they had kids using grade-ahead books. These common core standards have been adopted by every state -- except Alaska and Texas. I guess we'll always go our own way, no matter how much it sucks.

 

I have a friend who is very conservative. He has a wife and 3 small children. Last year, he dropped his insurance because he couldn't afford it. He only has a high school diploma and his job doesn't pay much. His wife is a stay at home mother.

When he dropped his insurance, I suggested he look into CHIP so that at least his kids would be insured. Without bothering to look, he told me he made too much money which I know is a load of crap. I know he just doesn't want to become one of those "lazy freeloading liberals that wants government to do everything for them" so he opts not to take advantage of the program and have his children insured.

 

All these dentists offices are popping up in the poor areas all over town because all these kids get state covered dental coverage.

Without paying a penny, they get all this work done are usually overbilled by the dentists but don't care as they didn't have to foot the bill.

 

This is what the voters wanted.

When crises affects people personally they then begin to question values they accept for granted.

Sucks for the kids.

 

You say that as if it were a bad thing.

 

Well, the overbilling part is bad.

 

Perry will say and do anything to promote himself, which is his agenda. He believes this bizarre and very harmful (harmful to the State of Texas) position will make him appealing to the radical/fundamentalist Right that he caters to. He has ambitions for higher office. Don't discount him. He's been successfully running Texas into the ground for years and no one has been able to stop him.

 

If it's true, sure. However, as is typical, no data was presented to validate that claim and, accordingly, I wager it to be bull****.

 

Overbilling would be bad, but that was speculative at best. Besides that, why would we be making poor children (or their parents, to give Rm81 the benefit of the doubt) responsible for policing dentists? The state should (and hopefully does) have mechanisms in place to deter and detect corruption.

 

Good luck Rick.

 

Getting dental care as a kid will save big $$ on dental care for them when they are adults. Overbilling won't happen if the state sets rates for certain procedures.

 

He wants to eliminate the federal program and have a state program instead. I don't really have a problem with that. I think Medicaid could be ran much better, and perhaps he feels the same. Thats just a states rights type of view. To be honest it would probably work fine in Texas, but not in every state. Every state is not equal.

 

There are some problems with the states having it. It could be if a person qualifies it in one state and doesn't in another state, then they would be screwed if something happened while in another state, or if they had to move.

It could also be a hassle for doctors who change states etc.

I understand the point of view regarding states rights, I just think it works better at the Federal level.

 

This is his opening gambit on closing the $25B budget deficit. It's always easiest to drop services to the poor and economically disadvantaged. They gutted the CHIPS program the last time we had a budget deficit back in 2003. Only this year have we reached the prior service level.

 

Why not eliminate Medicare for the great state of Texas?

 

Medicare is a federal program.

 

We have no money for such a program. The fact is that we have a huge multi-billion dollar deficit, made worse by Perry and his buddies turning down Federal dollars in matching funds, etc.. Perry knows this. He's babbling this nonsense for an audience, a particular audience, the audience that, although a minority of the Republican Party, has an inordinate amount of power. I'll repeat it... the state is broke. We have about an $18 billion dollar shortfall over the next biennium, maybe more.

 

Even if we had the money Perry might be the least trustworthy public official to run and implement such a thing. I'd trust the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority to run a program like that before Rick Perry.