Refusing to Support Bad Policy

There are a few places left in this country in which citizens and their local government can look at a program and say, "this simply isn't a good deal." Of course the sheeple of the grand progressive movement in the highly educated, over-taxed, largely bankrupt and eagerly dependent states to the north will look upon us as buffoons and fools to be ridiculed. We, however, are right.

Texas Refuses to Expand Medicaid

Why would someone say that putting more people on the Medicaid roll isn't a wonderful thing? It might be the very clear fact that it is impossible to provide more and better care to more people at less cost. Even without the new Obamacare additions, a review of Medicaid in practice shows some interesting trends.

Simply because the federal bureaucracy says you are covered under Medicaid doesn't actually mean you can get healthcare services. If the grand panjandrum of patient benevolence says your bill is paid in peanuts, you'll need to find a doctor who can subsist on peanuts.

Fewer and Fewer Willing to Work for Less and Less

Maybe they don't teach those simple economic truths at Harvard and Columbia, but in the harsh realities of the marketplace they exist.

Only 31 percent of Texas doctors said they were accepting new patients who rely on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled, in the survey provided to The Associated Press on Sunday. In 2010, the last time the survey was taken, 42 percent of doctors accepted new Medicaid patients. In 2000, that number was 67 percent.

Doctors are professionals. They don't generally devote a life to medicine because it is an easy route to wealth. They want to improve life for people, but in the process they also don't seek indentured servitude or poverty. If they can't get compensated at a rate to offset their operating costs, there is no motivation to perform. When you see a decline from 67% acceptance in 2000 to only 31% today, that is a clear message. And Obamacare's new influx hasn't even started yet.