This is a repost from a post I wrote at the end of last year. There was difficulty with it posting so I am reposting.

Ah. Texas. The state that takes the legal right regarding women’s healthcare and access to safe (legal) abortion (healthcare), prevents helping the otherwise preventable deaths of women who could be saved if given the healthcare needed, including women not seeking abortion.

Since Roe V Wade was overturned and states like Texas made abortion illegal, it is worth noting maternal mortality thus increased for all pregnant women; whether or not they had wanted to see pregnancy full term or not.

Another interesting fact on Medicaid in Texas is it no longer covers birth control (but it does cover ED medication, of course) – making Texas only one of two states in America to be so harshly hypocritical.

Texas does not care about life, and that’s reflected in how it treats people. In taking away safe abortion we see no care for women or the unwanted children forced into unwanted and often unsafe situations. Abortion care has never been about life, as it is not murder. It’s about money and control.

So it isn’t surprising, but still rather disappointing, to not only see women’s rights removed, many children –especially in foster care– and other people in need in the state, all having their right to what should be available to all.

To read more on the most recent removal of Medicaid in Texas and more on communities impacted by yet another ridiculous choice, read some quotes from propublica below and check the links at the end. One cites the quotes, the other I explain.

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“Nearly 1.4 million of those who lost coverage were disenrolled for bureaucratic reasons like failing to return a form or completing one incorrectly, not because they weren’t eligible.”

Abbott and state lawmakers have continued to severely limit the program to mostly children, pregnant women and disabled adults. Poor adults aren’t typically eligible for Medicaid unless they have children. Parents of two kids must earn a combined income of less than $285 monthly to qualify for coverage.

A spokesperson for Abbott declined an interview on his behalf and did not respond to a request for comment on the state’s handling of the unwinding. 

Texas’ stance during the unwinding, Haeder said, was, “We don’t do anything illegal, but we want to get our program as fast as we can down to what it was before the pandemic.”

Just a bit concerning…

“The federal government in May 2023 pressed Texas on why the state was moving so quickly. State officials downplayed the concerns, writing in an email obtained by the news organizations that they were frontloading people who most likely no longer qualified and were reviewing entire households at once.

Within the first four months of the unwinding, the state dropped more than 600,000 people from Medicaid. The vast majority were removed not because the state determined they were no longer eligible but for reasons such as failing to provide the proper documents in time.

That July, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra called on Texas and other states to increase the number of eligible people they automatically renewed with existing government data. He warned in a letter that his agency would take action against states that were not complying.

In the same week, a group of employees anonymously emailed HHSC Executive Commissioner Cecile Young and media organizations, claiming senior management had alerted them that tens of thousands of people had improperly lost Medicaid due to the agency’s poor handling of the unwinding. Young’s chief of staff responded in an email that she couldn’t address the allegations of unidentified whistleblowers.

Texas alerted the federal government days later that it had erroneously dropped nearly 100,000 people, according to records obtained by the news organizations.”

Texas Government Ignoring Federal Government and Texan Medicaid
Read more HERE.
To read the full article cited, which I have cited above, here.

For more detailed information pertaining to children & the lack of concern Texas has regarding that situation and health care coverage, click here.