The new mothers contracted infections. They overdosed on drugs. Their hearts failed. They committed suicide.
The women died in different ways, but all perished within a year of giving birth. Rising rates of maternal mortality spurred Texas leaders in 2017 to reauthorize a special task force to study the deaths and figure out what to do.
But at the end of this year’s legislative session, public health advocates are frustrated that lawmakers left Austin without adopting the task force’s top recommendation: giving women access to health care for a full year after they give birth.
The Legislature agreed to spend $15 million over the next two years on postpartum depression and substance abuse treatment for some low-income women. But a far more sweeping and higher cost plan to expand Medicaid coverage for all eligible new mothers failed, despite having support from Republicans and Democrats.
“We’re disappointed state leaders basically ignored the needs of uninsured moms and uninsured low wage workers this session, by not taking action on bills to extend postpartum coverage,” said Adriana Kohler, a senior health policy associate for the Austin-based advocacy group Texans Care for Children.
[…]
The funding, however, will likely cover only some of the roughly 136,000 pregnant women on Medicaid in any given month. And pregnant women who relied on Medicaid for their diabetes medication or other prescription drugs could still lose those benefits in the transition, some public health advocates said.
Other bills filed by Republicans and Democrats to expand the state’s Medicaid coverage for new mothers from two to 12 months, post delivery failed. The change would have cost the state upwards of $75 million a year, according to a fiscal note. The legislation passed the House, but died after not receiving a public hearing in the Senate.
Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, chalked it up to politics. “Republicans don’t want to be viewed as expanding Medicaid,” he said.
Just as a reminder, Greg Abbott made a last-minute attempt to put an extra $100 million into the budget for “border security”. The budget as adopted is spending over $5 billion to buy down property taxes. The Lege passed a tax cut on yacht sales, which won’t actually cost that much money but is still a tax cut on yacht sales. My point here is that this was not a decision based on a lack of available funds. It was a failure to act because the Republican leadership had no interest in doing it, for the reason Rep. Coleman cites. It was a choice they made, one that reflected their values. Keep that in mind when you hear the usual blather about being “pro-life”.