Posted by tx on August 23, 2009 under Governor's Race, Home Page | 
(Extracted from Texas Insider, an online newsletter)
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today emphasized the importance of state developed health care reform rather than the costly, expansive, one-size-fits-all mandates being considered by the federal government.
The governor spoke at a press conference announcing the results of a study about federal health care proposals conducted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).
“It’s clear Washington has no interest in allowing states to develop their own tailored solutions to problems that affect their citizens,” Gov. Perry said. “Instead we have a federal government bearing down on the states, preparing to take greater control through mandates and trampling innovation through runaway costs. The health care reform legislation currently being considered not only poses a serious threat to patients and providers, but will also cost Texas taxpayers tens of billions of dollars over the next 10 years without significantly improving care for Texans.”
The governor noted that aspects of our healthcare system need to be repaired and reformed, but issuing top-down mandates on a break-neck timetable is a surefire way to make things worse. He cited the Medicaid waiver request that Texas submitted in 2008 as an example of how the state is seeking solutions to health care reform that meet the needs of Texans.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last month, the governor reiterated his request for a federal Medicaid waiver that would help transform health care in Texas from a heavy reliance on hospital-based care to increased access to primary and preventive care. The plan is centered on state-specific solutions to eliminate costly federal mandates and use those resources to provide more low-income Texans with insurance, reduce expensive emergency room visits for basic care, and make it easier for the working poor to buy into employer-sponsored insurance. This reform waiver was originally sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in April 2008.
“Current proposals based on President Obama’s policies would worsen the system, increase costs, further escalate medical price inflation and add more than $285 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years,” said TPPF Senior Fellow Donna Arduin, a partner in the economic research firm Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics. “Clearly, these reforms are not a cost-effective way to expand health insurance and the news could be worse for Texans. If the federal government chooses to pass the financial responsibility for covering the expansion of lower income individual’s health insurance coverage to the states, the cost to Texans could be higher than the national average.”
Additionally, according to Arduin, legislation that would provide an additional $1 trillion in federal health care spending would not only slow both the Texas and the national economy, but also leave 30 million Americans uninsured.
Current federal proposals include significant Medicaid expansions at the state level, individual and employer mandates to purchase and offer qualifying insurance plans, and federal takeover of some current state insurance functions such as rates and coverage exclusions.
Extending Medicaid benefits to uninsured citizens at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level will cost Texas an additional $2 billion in general revenue per year, in addition to the $19 billion in general revenue the state expects to spend on Medicaid in the 2010-11 biennium. This type of federal government spending mandate would erode the state’s economic viability without containing health care costs or improving health care quality and access.
Posted by tx on August 20, 2009 under Governor's Race, Home Page, New American Revolution, Texas candidates |
Born in Beeville and raised on a South Texas farm, Debra Medina is a wife and mother, a registered nurse, a businesswoman, a rancher and a fighter.
Debra has always drawn strength from the courage of her convictions. She first got involved in politics in the early 1990s, when she saw that local leaders were not honoring the pro-life principles that guide her beliefs. Now chairing the Republican Party of Wharton County, she took the Republican Party of Texas to court in 2008 over violations in how the state convention was run.
Standing up to Goliaths is pretty much what Debra does.
She home-schooled both her children long before homeschooling had the kind of support and visibility it has today. She graduated from San Antonio’s Baptist Memorial Hospital System School of Nursing in 1984, and later earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from the evangelical Christian Le Tourneau University. In 2002, she founded her own business, Prudentia Inc., which specializes in improving medical billing procedures.
Through it all, Debra has waged and won battles that were not always popular – battles that often demanded uncompromising personal sacrifice. But this kind of strength is no surprise. After all, one of her ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. Another lost his life in the fall of 1842 in the Dawson Massacre near San Antonio, fighting to preserve Texas independence.
Today, Debra Medina continues this legacy. She stands solidly on the principles of limited government, a sound economy, individual liberty and the inviolable importance of family, community and faith.
Favorite Quotes:
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Barry Goldwater, 1964
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Quincy Adams
“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8
Visit Debra Medina’s website at http://www.medinafortexas.com/.
Posted by tx on August 3, 2009 under Governor's Race, Home Page |
Hutchison Now Wants D.C. Mandates? by MQSullivan
From “Empower Texas/Texans for Fiscal Responsibility”
You’ll remember that Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the conservatives in the Legislature were right to stop the string-laden “stimulus” dollars from entering Texas’ unemployment insurance fund this spring.
After having voted against the federal stimulus package in the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison is now critical of Perry for not taking Texas down the economically ruinous path of accepting those same dollars. She wants credit for having voted against what she now says Perry should have been for; it’s enough to make your head spin.
Sen. Hutchison was noticably silent as the debate over the stimulus raged in Austin, which saw the far-left demanding the mandate-heavy “UI” funds. Our organization, the conservative movement, legislative leaders and the responsible business community (large and small businesses alike) all opposed efforts to foist those burdensome unemployment fund dollars on Texas.
Not only would taking the dollars have required massive, permanent tax increases in the future, it would have done so because of requirements that the state forever alter our successful unemployment insurance laws. Short-term cash for long-term pain. A double-whammy of bad economics and bad policy, which Hutchison now apparently supports.
The senator is betraying a troubling lack of awareness about how strongly Texas has performed economically compared to the rest of the nation. While California and nearly every other state had massive deficits, Texas lawmakers (at the recommendation of TFR and others) filled budget gaps responsibly only with one-time federal monies, rather than hiking taxes. And while some states are writing IOUs even after taking much more federal cash, Texas has a full rainy day fund. Thanks, it should be added, in no small part to Texans having not pursued the same big-tax, grow-government welfare-state policies Washington rules would have mandated.
Hopefully we’re not seeing how Hutchison intends to govern the state, should she finally formally announce her long-teased intention to run for governor. We don’t need a cheerleader for failed economic policy; we need a leader who will promote sensible, free-market policies proven to work for the Lone Star State.
Texas has its challenges, but none that will be fixed by allowing Washington, DC, to command we follow the economical disasterous policy courses adopted by California, Illinois and the like.
