Thank God for the Affordable Care Act

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For those who are interested, here is more information on Texas' situation.

It would be foolish to reject billions, especially if we’re paying for it anyway, Moriarty said. “Here you’ve got these very conservative individuals arguing that we shouldn’t accept this money because of the burden to the Texas taxpayer. But an important fact about what’s being proposed is, by not accepting these funds, we’d be taxed twice. First of all, we won’t get our state monies back from the federal government. And secondarily, as a property owner, I pay hospital district taxes, and so I’m paying and subsidizing these costs at a local level.”

The prospect of rejecting so many billions is giving county officials heartburn. Some of the state’s biggest metropolitan counties are looking for a way around Perry and other state leaders if they continue to block Medicaid expansion. In August, George Hernandez, president and CEO of University Health System in San Antonio, which runs the indigent program in Bexar County, made national headlines after he proposed that Texas’ six most populous counties band together to circumvent the state and apply for the federal Medicaid expansion money on their own.

Most counties are already tapped out, having formed local taxing districts to fund public hospitals and indigent programs. Hernandez’s University Health System has 55,000 uninsured county residents enrolled in its indigent program. Each person in the program costs county taxpayers $2,000 a year, he said.

At least 26,000 of those patients could be covered under the Medicaid expansion. “That’s a $53 million savings every year to Bexar County taxpayers.”

Rick Perry's Refusal to Expand Texas' Medicaid Program Could Result In Thousands of Deaths - The Texas Observer