Protesters in Austin call for expanded Medicaid

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By Dave Montgomery

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AUSTIN -- In 2004, Sheila Anderson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. A year ago, she lost her job -- and the health insurance that went along with it.

Tuesday, the 46-year-old Keller resident was among a busload of Tarrant County residents who traveled to Austin with a message to Gov. Rick Perry and Texas lawmakers: Expand Medicaid to Texans like Anderson.

Several hundred people from across the state rallied at the Texas Capitol to lend their voices to what has become a highly visible issue in the 2013 Legislature.

An expansion of Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act would widen coverage to an additional 1 million-plus low-income Texans, but Gov. Rick Perry has repeatedly opposed that option, calling the federal-state insurance program "an unsustainable system."

Wearing yellow caps emblazoned with "My Medicaid Matters," marchers walked along Congress Avenue to the south steps of the Capitol, where more than a dozen speakers urged Perry and lawmakers to expand coverage of the joint state-federal insurance program for the poor. House Republicans, in a closed caucus this week, voted overwhelmingly against Medicaid expansion "in its current form" but left the door open to negotiations for what some Republicans describe as a "Texas solution."

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/03/05/4662947/protesters-march-on-texas-capitol.html#storylink=cpy

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1. Texas Insurance Companies, staying with the old way of, for profit health care, set up by the

Texas Legislature, is the Texas solution.

What did Texas private insurance companies do to get ready to care for everybody? Promoted the TX Legislature to set up Texas Medicaid paid for by the Texas taxpayers.

Texans pay federal income tax so state like New Mexico can get their people, partially taken care by Texan income taxes. For the next several years, just long enough for the health of New Mexicans to improve, their health care cost will come way down by the time New Mexico assumes more of its own Medicaid costs. And if a one payer system ensues the ACA's initial measures, then states like NM may glide into almost perfect coverage for all of its people at very little cost.