“Pro life” Abbott claims his executive order requiring public hospitals to collect immigration status of its patients is about getting reimbursed from the federal government.
From The Texas Tribune:
Previous guidance for public hospitals did not include questions about immigration status. The executive order would mandate the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to collect this information so that the state of Texas could then bill the federal government.
“Due to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ open border policies, Texas has had to foot the bill for medical costs for individuals illegally in the state,” Governor Abbott said in a statement on Thursday. “Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants.”
Regardless of Abbott’s motivation, he has to know that the effect of this order will be to frighten undocumented immigrants from going to the hospital at all. If an undocumented person avoids treatment for a communicable disease, such as COVID, then it can more easily spread to citizens, too.
And I’d love to know how much it is going to cost the state for all the extra administration work in gathering and processing the new data as well as the cost to “bill” the federal government and collect.
Abbott likes to posture as a big “pro-life” guy but that’s only if you’re still a fetus. Once you’re born, he’s pretty much pro-death.
For one thing, Texas by far is the state with the highest percentage without health insurance. In fact, it’s nearly double the national rate of uninsured, Axios notes. Much of it has to do with the fact that the state has refused to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Also, the state has removed more than 2 million people from its Medicaid rolls, “mostly for procedural reasons,” Axios says.
Then there is the state’s draconian abortion law. Since its passage, infant death rates have spiked. It hasn’t been good for the health of pregnant women, either. On top of that, there’s Abbott’s shocking loosening of gun regulations in Texas. Over the objections of law enforcement and the majority of Texans, Abbott signed a law abolishing the requirement for a handgun permit, thus allowing almost anyone to walk around with a handgun, whether they knew how to use it or not. There were also his anti-vaccine and anti-mask mandates. On top of all that, he vetoed a bill punishing dog abuse.
Putting lives and health at risk for the sake of some performative anti-immigration stunt fits in perfectly with Abbott’s pro-death record.
