1.5 million low-income Texans may go without health care coverage after lawmakers in the state voted against expanding Medicaid using $100 billion in federal funds offered under President Obama’s health care law. The decision comes almost a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government cannot require states to enroll more Medicaid beneficiaries. The proposal, sent to Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Sunday, says state health officials “may only provide medical assistance to a person who would have been otherwise eligible for medical assistance or for whom federal matching funds were available under the eligibility criteria for medical assistance in effect on December 31, 2013.” Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government fully funds Medicaid expansion until 2016 and gradually reduces its contribution to 90 percent in 2020 and subsequent years. Texas — which has the highest percentage of uninsured residents — would never pay more than 7 percent of the cost of providing coverage to Texans, but Texas Republicans argued that “even $1 in the name of ‘Obamacare’ was a dollar too much.” “Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system,” Perry said. The decision means a loss of approximately $7 billion for Texas hospitals, which comes on top of the $700 million a year reduction in Medicaid payments from state budget shortfalls and cuts under sequestration. Read more http://thinkprogress.org/health/201...to-15-million-low-income-residents/?mobile=nc
