Governor Perry has opted out of participating in the High Risk Pool that becomes effective this summer for anyone who has a preexisting illness and is unable to purchase insurance. While Texas already has a High Risk Pool insurance that I purchase for my wife, a Lupus sufferer, the rates are rather high and to date only insures 26,000 Texans, while Texas has 5.4 million uninsured citizens including 1.5 million children. Most of these are not illegal aliens but your neighbors. Most of these are not free loaders but people who just want an affordable option. When you go to church, look around, more than one in four of your friends are without health insurance NOW. Governor Perry has sealed their faith till 2014 when the Healthcare Reform Bill is responsibly implemented.
Texans are taxpayers. For Perry to unilaterally take away in excess of 493 million dollars from the healthcare of Texas, a state with one of the largest uninsured population is morally corrupt. For Perry, this is a necessary political move to maintain the deceptive narrative that healthcare reform does not take effect until 2014 while taxes are being collected retroactively. To be clear, effective this summer, anyone in Texas who could not get health insurance because of a preexisting condition, was just denied coverage by Rick Perry.
This not the first time that Rick Perry has materially hindered the best interests of Texans, as he has denied access to a portion of $750 million dollar in “Race To The Top” education funds on false premises of curriculum standards. He also rejected over $550 million in federal unemployment compensation from the stimulus which would have further stimulated more economic activity in our state.
A governor that puts an ineffectual ideology over the interest of his state must no longer be tolerated. While the Texas economic decline in this depression was not as bad as many states because of the specific industries that we are blessed with; the changing economy will not be kind going forward. We need to be governed by those who have the ability to change with today’s realities as opposed to attempting to relive a past foreign to most.