If the Tea Party has its way next year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will become president of the United States. What we can expect from a Perry administration is a lavish inaugural, a medieval approach to science and religion, trickle-down economics and an approach to health care that places even basic medical care beyond the reach of most people, according to a report on NPR.
Only 48 percent of the Texans have private health insurance, and more than a quarter of the state’s population has no insurance at all — more than any other state. Perry has been governor for a decade, so the state of health care in Texas is a result of — let’s call it PerryCare.
Over the past eight years, citing budget constraints, Gov. Rick Perry and the Republican-controlled legislature have dropped hundreds of thousands of mostly poor and working-class Texans from the rolls of government-sponsored insurance like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Nearly 6.5 million Texans are now uninsured even though the majority of them have full-time jobs.
Premiums in Texas’ unregulated health insurance industry have soared by 105 percent over the past 10 years, according to the federal Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. Texas employers have responded by raising employee deductibles, often dramatically, or by dropping their coverage entirely.
This year, the Texas legislature and Gov. Perry cut funding for family planning clinics by 60 percent. Those funds were used for birth control, but also Pap smears, and screening for breast cancer, diabetes, thyroid disorders, anemia and high cholesterol. But mainly the cuts were about abortions, with the hyper-religious Perry pandering to the hyper-conservative Texas Tea Party.
When The Texas Tribune asked state Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Nacogdoches), a supporter of the family planning cuts, if this was a war on birth control, he said “yes.”
“Well of course this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything — that’s what family planning is supposed to be about,” Christian said.
Trouble is, the 71 family planning clinics that receive government funding and are routinely referred to by many Texas Republican legislators as “abortion clinics” don’t provide abortions. Texas and federal law prohibits that, so women’s health clinics refer women or teens who want an abortion to a provider.
But the cuts will actually have the opposite impact on Texas’ budget. The state estimates nearly 300,000 women will lose access to family planning services, which will result in 20,000 more unplanned births. Texas already spends $1.3 billion on teen pregnancies — more than any other state.
So, Texas leads in number of uninsured and the number of teen pregnancies — there couldn’t be a correlation there, could there?
The kicker is that $8.4 million that was cut from family planning will now go to Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Texas. Crisis Pregnancy Centers are the pro-life movement’s answer to family planning clinics. They put up billboards encouraging women and girls who are pregnant to contact them — but they don’t provide referrals to abortion providers, only pro-life propaganda and referrals to adoption agencies.
But only 1 percent to 2 percent of pregnant teens and women say they will give their child up preferring abortion over adoption.
Apparently PerryCare works in Opposite Land, advocating budget cuts that don’t save money and pro-life programs that don’t stop abortions.
