Gov Rick Perry Tells Obama to Take His Obamatax and Shove It Up His Ass

Perry defies Obamacare, won’t expand Medicaid in Texas:”I will not be party to socializing health care.” wtim.es/NjkoT3

— The Washington Times (@washtimes) July 9, 2012

Thank you, Gov. Rick Perry:

“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab,” he said in a statement. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.”

Perry’s office sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday morning asserting his opposition, both to accepting more than a hundred million federal dollars over the next several years to put more poor Texas adults onto Medicaid, and to creating an Orbitz-style online insurance marketplace for consumers.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states — even Texas, which has the country’s highest rate of the uninsured — may not be punished for opting out of the Medicaid expansion. On Monday, Perry called it the equivalent of adding more people to a sinking Titanic.

Of course, the Texas Liberal media elites — to include Emily Ramshaw of the Texas Tribune, who wrote the above report — are incredulous that Gov. Perry would dare (how dare he!?!?) refuse Obama’s socialization of our medical system here in Texas.

The Honorable Arlene Wohlgemuth, executive director and director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation gets it though:

“We applaud Governor Perry’s leadership in rejecting the implementation of ObamaCare in Texas. Access to health care, affordability of health care, and health care outcomes are tremendous concerns for all Texans – and the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid and so-called insurance exchanges are grave threats to all three.

“Medicaid in particular is a failed system, which has time and again reduced health care choices and generated poor results for ordinary Texans and their families. ObamaCare would force millions more low-income Texans into this poorly performing program that gives access to less than a third of the state’s physicians, and is often worse than no health insurance at all. Those Texans, and those families, deserve better.

“The ObamaCare insurance exchange, like the Medicaid expansion, is another false promise to the people of Texas. Instead of allowing an actual free market for individuals in health insurance, the exchange subordinates it to the demands of state and federal control, inevitably squeezing out the very sector that ought to be encouraged for a long-term solution to American health-insurance coverage.

“If the federal government wants to promote access to health care for low-income Texans, it should block-grant Medicaid to the state, so that we can develop a program that meets Texas’s needs – not D.C.’s aspirations. If the federal government wants to promote access to health insurance for all Texans, it should step back and allow an individual market in health insurance to develop.

“ObamaCare accomplishes neither of these goals. In fact, it hinders them. That’s why we support Governor Perry’s rejection of it today.”