It’s constitutional – deal with it
Leading Texas Republicans on Monday asked the Obama administration for greater flexibility to administer Medicaid — a move that has gotten little traction in the past — while reiterating that they would not participate in an expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.
“Any expansion of Medicaid in Texas is simply not worth discussing,” state Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, said at a press conference.
Schwertner and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick both told reporters that the federal-state health insurance program for the elderly and disabled was on an “unsustainable trajectory” of growing costs. In a letter, they asked the federal government for more wiggle room to administer the program, requesting cost-cutting changes to its benefits packages and seeking to require that Medicaid beneficiaries have or seek employment to get health coverage.
Similar requests by former Gov. Rick Perry for flexibility in spending Medicaid dollars failed under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
[…]
State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said Monday that the proposals were “a non-starter and everyone knows it.”
“We should be following the example of other Republican states who are finding fiscally responsible solutions to closing the coverage gap rather than increasing it,” Coleman said in a statement.
About the only way sillier would have been if Patrick et al had included a photo with their note of a Medicaid recipient, blindfolded and with his feet bound to a chair, holding up a newspaper with today’s date on it, ransom note-style. An appropriate response from the President would be something like this:
And then we could all pretend none of this ever happened, and go about our business.
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