Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the many Republican governors to reject Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, recently offered a curious metaphor to explain his decision: Providing the working poor in his state with healthcare would be "like putting 1,000 more people on the Titanic when you knew what was going to happen," Perry said at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association.
While Perry is far from the only GOP governor to reject Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, his decision may be the most significant. According to estimates, more than a million Texans would be eligible for Medicaid if Perry were to accept the expansion. Cost shouldn't be an issue, either; the federal government foots the entire bill for expansion for the first three years, then assumes a 90 percent responsibility thereafter.
Yet Perry's opposition to the expansion is not so much about fiscal policy as it is about the governor's states' rights ideology. As Perry said at the Republican Governors Association meeting, his opposition to Medicaid is "a philosophical position.”
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