Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (Jim Mahoney/Staff photographer)
Three county judges from populous Texas counties, several pastors and priests and a raft of Democratic lawmakers urged state GOP leaders Wednesday to reverse course and accept $100 billion of additional federal funds over the next decade by agreeing to expand Medicaid.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said business leaders and local elected officials want the Legislature to “find a Texas solution” so Medicaid can be expanded and 1.5 million uninsured Texans can gain coverage over the next four years.
“Do you want to do coverage for these folks the way we’ve been doing it, which is the most expensive, inefficient and unhelpful way — to have them clog our emergency rooms because they have nowhere else to go?” Jenkins said at a rally on the Capitol’s north steps. “Or do you want to do it in the cheapest and most efficient way?”
Jenkins said in an interview that 133,000 of Dallas County’s 673,000 would gain coverage if Texas were to expand Medicaid. In a commentary for the Texas Tribune, he said the expansion would bring $580.5 million a year of new Medicaid funds to Dallas County.
The rally was organized by groups such as Dallas Area Interfaith, which is part of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky. The Texas Network of IAF Organizations has launched a petition drive urging lawmakers and Gov. Rick Perry to embrace the expansion.
Adding low-income adults to Medicaid is a key provision of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law, and the state could draw down the extra $100.1 billion by putting up $15.6 billion of its own funds through 2023. However, Perry and GOP legislative captains have declared their opposition to the expansion, saying that Medicaid is inefficient and a budget-buster.
In his commentary, Jenkins acknowledged there are “flaws in the current Medicaid system,” such as too few participating doctors. But he said accepting the federal Medicaid matching money would allow the Dallas County Hospital District, which raises $425 million a year from homeowners and businesses, to cut property tax rates. The center-left Austin think tank the Center for Public Policy Priorities has calculated that the additional $580.5 million a year of Medicaid funds flowing into Dallas County would be enough to support 3,185 more family practice doctors.
“Medicaid expansion is the most important health care opportunity in a generation,” Jenkins said.
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, told the crowd that economists Ray Perryman and Billy Hamilton have vouched that the expansion “would be a good deal for the state.”
The federal government will pay for 100 percent of the cost of the newly covered adults for the first three years and at least 90 percent in subsequent years.
West noted that some Republicans have objected that the federal government may curtail spending on the federal health care law as part of efforts to reduce the national debt.
“If the federal government decides not to keep its word, we should have legislation that allows the state of Texas to re-think its commitment,” he said.
Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, cast Medicaid expansion as an issue of social justice.
“It is a critical charge of government that we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves,” he said. “It is fundamental, it is moral and it is something we must and can do.”