TEXAS MEDICAID ATTITUDES - A new survey released today by the Episcopal Health Foundation based in Houston -- finds a majority of Texans support Medicaid expansion. Of 1200 respondents - nearly two-thirds want to expand the program to cover more low-income, uninsured people in Texas. Democrats are the strongest proponents of expansion at 84 percent. Only 38 percent of Republicans would like to see Medicaid expanded, while 55 percent want to keep Medicaid as it is. Elena Marks is the President and CEO of the Episcopal Health Foundation. She explains that a large share of those respondents either did not know the status of Medicaid expansion in Texas, mistakenly believed it had been expanded.
“If people don’t know this, then they don’t what the
possible solutions are,"explained Marks. "If you don’t know whether we’ve expanded Medicaid and if you don’t know that we have a high number of uninsured, you might not think there is a problem or that expansion of Medicaid is a solution to the problem.”
Texas has the nation’s highest uninsured rate. It’s also one of 14 states still refusing to expand Medicaid. The Urban Institute says those states are missing out on an estimated 300-billion-dollars in federal funding for health care between 2013 and 2022.
