Ebola, Texas and ObamaCare

Governor Perry and many of the extreme right-wing Republicans in Texas including Ted Cruz are extremely proud of their efforts to repeal affordable health care in Texas. They have proven by their actions that they favor the old ’emergency room’ health care system.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has joined the ranks of other GOP governors eager to assert the sovereignty of their states by nullifying the ObamaCare law. Perry announced on Monday that the Lone Star State will not be expanding the Medicaid program or creating the necessary healthcare exchange to implement the president’s signature legislation. As noted by Reuters, “The announcement makes Texas the most populous state that has rejected the provisions.”¹

One thing that history has abundantly demonstrated to us about the ’emergency room’ plan is that low income folks and folks without health insurance are routinely turned away from hospitals as Mr. Duncan was recently or wait for hours in the waiting rooms while sharing any opportunist germs with each other. This is not the fault of the hospitals. It is the fault of reckless and opportunist politicians which are content to manipulate the public using highly funded and deep pockets, thanks to the Citizens United decision², into believing that they will not be directly affected by opposing ObamaCare. However, in the case of recent Ebola infections in Texas, it should be clear that the more folks of low income or no health insurance are ignored by the ’emergency room’ status quo, the more hospitals are forced to be lax with their admissions due to lack of adequate resources. See this chart below to see how Texas fares with the rest of the country. Note that these statistics even factor in the other conservative states which also refused the federal aid for Medicaid as “U.S. Uninsured”. The tragic difference is much more apparent in Texas when those conservative states are factored out from this data.

	Texas Uninsured	U.S. Uninsured

Uninsured total population	24%	15%

Uninsured children	16%	9%

All adults uninsured, 19-64 years of age	32%	21%

Uninsured women 19-64	30%	19%

Uninsured men 19-64	33%	23%

Nonelderly uninsured- at least one full-time worker	24%	15%

Nonelderly uninsured by gender	Male – 52% Female – 48%	Male – 53% Female – 47%

Nonelderly uninsured by race/ethnicity	White – 24% Black – 10% Hispanic – 62% Other – 4%	White – 45% Black – 15% Hispanic – 32% Other – 8%

Uninsured rates for the nonelderly by age	Children 18 and under – 16% Adults 19-64 – 32%	Children 18 and under – 9% Adults 19-64 – 21%

Distribution of the nonelderly with employer coverage by age	Children 18 and under – 18% Adults 19-64 – 81%	Children 18 and under – 15% Adults 19-64 – 85%

Source: Kaiser State Health Facts, 2012

– See more at: http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=5519#sthash.HL3MzX1Q.dpuf

What is lost in the right’s rhetoric is the vested interest that we all have in making sure that the U.S. has adequate health care. When the poor and uninsured are no longer the ‘they that can be conveniently ignored’ but the ‘they’ that can spread Ebola to the wealthy and insured, the political landscape changes. If hospitals are underfunded and under staffed thanks to the law signed by Ronal Reagan requiring hospitals to take care of the indigent³ they will not be able to adequately screen for conditions like Ebola. This is no longer a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ problem but a problem that threatens even the most red states. I have always maintained that you can be a very selfish, ‘me only’ voter and still have valid reasons, your own interest, for providing a “safety net” as Reagan called it for the less fortunate. It is unfortunate the even Democrats are running away from these principles in their local elections after the brutal beating from the right on ObamaCare. If we as Americans do not learn from the Ebola incident, we fully deserve everything that will come from our convenient ignorance.

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¹See Texas Refuses to Implement ObamaCare

²See Money is Free Speech?

³See Simpson-Bowles Revisited

Also, see this column by Duncan’s nephew:

Exclusive: Ebola didn’t have to kill Thomas Eric Duncan, nephew says