Cristina Briceno
Texas Government
Section 2306.S21
March 7, 2017
Medicaid and Obamacare in Texas Medicaid and other welfare programs have long been serving individuals living not just in Texas but in the United States as a whole. The Affordable Care Act is another one of those programs that was implemented by former President Obama to help insure the uninsured across the 50 states. While it does have many pros, some Americans believe that it is not working and that it is imposing a burden on those who do not benefit off of any welfare program or the Obamacare. Now, with Donald Trump as our President, one of his priorities is to repeal this Affordable Care Act that our former president had enforced and cut the budget for medicaid; and hopefully
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Texas is one of those states that opposes them. A welfare program Texas is against would be Medicaid and its’ expansion. Statistics show that there are over five million uninsured citizens in Texas(Sommers 2016). Who are these uninsured people in Texas? This group of uninsured is very diverse, it includes people who cannot afford private health insurance, those who choose not to buy it even though they can afford it and those who do not enroll in government programs. The majority of these uninsured tend to be Hispanics, adults between the ages of 19-34. There is a correlation between the uninsured and their annual income, the less money you make the less affordable healthcare becomes. Texas is also ranked 49th in the nation with only 47 percent of Texans having employment-based health insurance. With this being said we can see how healthcare is not one of the priorities of the Texas government. Even though it is not a priority here in the state, it needs to be addressed because the uninsured are up to four times less likely to receive any type of health assistance and therefore more likely to die. An estimate of 1 in every six Texans live under the poverty level; for children, it is approximately one in five. These statistics indicate that there is a huge problem with the uninsured, the numbers are just too high. If the health assistance was extended the health of these uninsured would improve by 7 to 8