Turns out that kicking millions of people off Medicaid is really bad!
The Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigated how Texas behaved in the aftermath of COVID-19, and — surprise!! — we were extremely shitty toward poor people who needed healthcare.
To briefly sum up, we kicked more than two million people off Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low income families, in the aftermath of the pandemic. As a result, lots of people weren’t able to get the care they needed. Some children had to forgo or postpone life-saving operations such as heart surgeries, said Dr. Kimberly Avila Edwards, an Austin pediatrician and Texas representative for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Children with severe diseases like sickle cell anemia also lost care.
Previously, the federal government gave states billions in exchange for not stripping people of Medicaid coverage during the pandemic, with the goal of not exacerbating the crisis. Makes sense! As a result, Medicaid rolls grew — in Texas by more than 50%, to six million people.
But that agreement ended last year, and you better believe that Texas moved quickly to make sure poor folks didn’t have any health insurance. This comes as no surprise in a state that historically hates kids having health insurance (we’re the worst in the nation), but even for us, this was crappy.
“The difference in how Texas approached this compared to a lot of other states is and was very striking. It wanted everybody off, anybody extra off, even though we knew that meant that state systems would buckle under the pressure,” said Erin O’Malley, a policy analyst with the left-leaning advocacy group Every Texan.
Despite the feds advising states to go slowly in removing people from Medicaid, Texas politely said “fuck that” and put the pedal to the metal. Our state immediately started reviews of 4.6 million cases in the first six months after the agreement with the feds ended. And instead of automatically renewing people, as was suggested, we forced people to resubmit documents proving they qualified.
Not surprisingly, almost 1.4 million were kicked off for bureaucratic reasons like — wait for it — failing to return a form or completing one incorrectly! It’s almost like it was intentional!
Anyway, you can guess what happened next: Lots of people and kids aren’t receiving much-needed healthcare.
So yeah, we live in a state that dramatically cloaks itself in Christianity yet continues to ignore its basic tenets like caring for the sick. Because that might cost us money.
