Like Bobby Jindal, Rick Scott, Scott Walker, and a growing number of additional state governors, Rick Perry has told HHS Commissar Sebelius that Texas won’t be creating a state-based insurance exchange or expanding Medicaid. His letter puts it as follows:
Neither a ‘state’ exchange’ nor the expansion of Medicaid under the Orwellian-named PPACA would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable çare.’ What they would do is make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.
He continues in terms that are, mercifully, a good deal clearer than some of his public statements during the GOP primaries:
I oppose both the expansion of Medicaid as provided in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the creation of a so-called “state” insurance exchange, because both represent brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.
And Perry makes it clear that he sees this as an act of solidarity with the other governors who have chosen to resist a federal power grab:
I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the PPACA power grab. Thank God and our nation’s founders that we have the right to do so.
As I point out in this column for the American Spectator, this kind of resistance from the states can kill ObamaCare if enough of them refuse to become “mere appendages of the federal government.” Good for Rick Perry.
[ht Erika Johnsen]