Let me give you a hint:
"Oil-industry backed poll shows 60% of Texans support fracking"
Yet today we get a poll released by a healthcare group showing that 60% of Texans are in favor of expanding Medicaid and no one bats an eye.
Study: Texans Favor Medicaid Expansion. Jenny Deam, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
More than 60 percent of Texans support an expansion of Medicaid here and plan to take those views into the voting booth in November, a new survey commissioned by the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute finds.The survey results, unveiled Wednesday at the annual Medical World Americas convention in Houston, show the public at odds with the state's Republican leadership, which has steadfastly refused to consider such an expansion, calling it wasteful and a bad solution.
Since this is an article in the Houston Chronicle, I've not yet seen either the cross-tabs or the wording behind this poll. A Google search for the same revealed nothing. All we know is what the article, and the Texas Medical Center, are saying, and we're supposed to accept that as 100% true.
Forgive my skepticism but I have a hard time believing any poll if it's backed, funded and released by a group that has a bias in the outcome unless I see the details behind it and have a chance to look at how the questions were worded, whether trade-offs were proposed etc. These details matter.
It's similar to the issues that I consistently have with the Houston Area Survey which constantly asks broad questions without once suggesting that a trade-off is always going to be required. Yes, people would love to live in a more urban, centralized environment but they wouldn't want to do so if a.) they had to live in a high-rise condo or b.) pay 5 times what they pay for their current homes.
The same goes for Medicaid expansion. Unless you have no heart (and I'm presuming that most of you do) then you're all for everyone getting the healthcare they need. The problem lies in the trade-offs.
What if an expansion of Medicaid means that the State will have to raise your (yours, not just the people making slightly more than you) taxes? Or, create a State income tax that will soon probably be non-deductible from Federal taxes?
What if you will be required to lose a portion of coverage that you care about because hospitals and doctors will be required to care for a certain percentage of high-financial-risk patients?
From what I can tell, the biggest impediment to Texas expanding Medicaid is the red-tape that it will force the State to absorb. The Obama Administration could have chosen to offer block-grants to the States, allowing them to establish systems that work for them (Texas is not the same as Arizona for example) but instead they chose a 'one-size-fits-all' solution that is fitting none, and in many cases causing the exchanges to collapse and the bill to cast doubt on the efficacy of the private medical system. (Which, it should be noted, it exactly what it was meant to do)
But a bigger issue is that Houston's former newspaper of record is becoming an opinion magazine rather than a repository for journalism. Whether on this issue or where people pee and take shits the Chronicle is no longer a trusted source for information.
