Shortly before 1 a.m. on July 15, Gov. Greg Abbott sent an email from his personal account to his top advisers about an editorial published by the Houston Chronicle. Its author, Ken Janda, had written that Texas’ health care safety net system for the poor and uninsured was “in serious danger of meltdown” because state leaders were refusing to expand health coverage to a million uninsured Texans living in poverty.
The governor told aides he wanted to “see the financials” of Janda’s nonprofit Community Health Choice, a health insurer affiliated with the Harris Health System, one of Texas’ largest public hospitals. “I’m told by informed sources that most of these entities are rolling in dough,” Abbott wrote.
The governor’s skepticism about how big a financial hit Texas’ public hospitals are taking by caring for the state’s sizable uninsured population is a crucial consideration to a $17.6 billion problem Abbott inherited when he was elected last year.
Website: www.texastribune.org/2015/08/31/emails-show-abbotts-plans-health-care-safety-net/