A mixed group of community organizers and business associations is demanding Texas lawmakers come up with solution to close an insurance coverage gap affecting approximately one million working Texans.
A few hundred community organizers and members of 25 conservative leaning business groups stood in front of the State Capitol, demanding their leaders find a solution for Texas’ gap in coverage — the people who do not qualify for other forms of Medicaid but also don’t earn enough to purchase insurance on their own.
In 2013, then Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature opted out of a program available under the Affordable Care Act, which would have expanded the current Medicaid system. Their rationale: The system was broken, so why expand it?
But the president of the Texas Hospital Association, Ted Shaw, said that not having any solution for one million uninsured Texans is creating a real burden on hospitals and those in the state with insurance. “Those people show up in the emergency room, they’re more sick than they should be. And if they had insurance, they would’ve been able to access primary care and preventive care. So that burden falls on to the hospitals, the hospitals have to pass it on then to either local property tax payers or through a private insurance,” Shaw explained.
Shaw added that an expansion did not have to mean Medicaid expansion; he said it could actually be accomplished with private insurance through a block grant.
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of those challenging the funding mechanism for the Affordable Care Act, Shaw said Texas would add an additional one million people to the list of uninsured because it would affect the amount of subsidies coming back to Texans, leaving some with no choice but to drop their coverage.
But it isn’t just the medical community that is affected by this gap in coverage, said Will Garrett, the Vice Chair for Economic Development at the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. “For those businesses that aren’t able to provide healthcare or can’t afford to have their employees out sick because they don’t have healthcare, this is a business accelerator if we can find a way to close this coverage gap throughout the state. Studies have shown that in Bexar County alone, 20-25,000 jobs annually could be created if this coverage expansion is achieved,” said Garrett.
Near the end of 2013, Texas requested a federal block grant to create its own expansion of services, but that proposal was rejected. At the start of this session, the Republicans in the Texas Senate sent a letter to the Center for Medicaid Services, asking that they provide Texas more flexibility in creating its own expansion system.
