On Fox News Sunday, former Texas governor Rick Perry defended his refusal to opt into ObamaCare – and waved off the fact that Texas had the highest uninsured rate in the country – by saying, “That’s not how we keep score.” And by touting tort reform.
Ironically, before the subject of health insurance came up, Perry talked about the importance of health for a presidential candidate. Discussing his famous “Oops” in 2012, Perry told host Chris Wallace, “I highly recommend anybody running for the presidency, make sure you’re healthy. … I learned, number one, you have to be healthy.”
Even more ironically, Perry is presenting himself as a populist candidate. Wallace played a clip of Perry saying, “The American people, they see this rigged game where the insiders get rich, the middle class pays the tab. There is something wrong when the Dow is near record highs and businesses on Main Street can’t even get a loan.”
To his credit, Wallace confronted Perry on the hypocrisy. He also pressed Perry as he tried to brush aside the inconvenient truth by holding up tort reform.
WALLACE: One more question about Main Street or looking out for the little guy. When you were governor of Texas, your state had the highest uninsured rate in the country. One in five, more than one in five Texans didn’t have health coverage, and yet you refused to set up a state exchange under Obamacare. You refused to expand Medicaid. I mean, is that looking out for the little guy when 21 percent of Texans didn’t have health insurance?
PERRY: If how you keep score is how many people you force to buy insurance, then I would say that that’s how you keep score. That’s not how we –
WALLACE: But the flip side of it. How many people don’t have health insurance?
PERRY: Let me explain what we do in Texas. This is a state by state decision. We make access to healthcare the real issue. We passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation. We got 35,000 more physicians licensed to practice medicine in 2013 than we did a decade before that. This is an issue for me, it’s about access to healthcare. And it’s not about whether you force somebody to buy insurance. It’s whether Texans have access to good healthcare.
We have got the Texas Medical Center, and physicians are showing up in places that literally we didn’t have physicians to do those subspecialties ten years ago that we do today.
The fact of the matter is that tort reform is a boon for medical professionals and their insurance companies, not patients - at least not those who live on “Main Street.” The Guardian notes, “Proposition 12, the ballot measure (that) enacted sweeping changes to Texas’ civil liability laws …didn’t end up dropping medical costs or attracting more doctors to Texas. …(T)he effect was to kill medical malpractice lawsuits for all but the richest plaintiffs."
Wallace didn’t dispute Perry’s dubious claim about tort reform but he didn’t let Perry off the hook about his state’s uninsured, either.
WALLACE: I understand that, sir, but don’t you, as the governor for 14 years, don’t you feel some responsibility when 21 percent of the people in your state didn’t have health insurance?
No, Perry doesn't feel any responsibility for so many uninsured.
PERRY: But that’s not how we keep score. I think it’s a fallacy to say access to healthcare is all about insurance. What we happen to say in the state of Texas is we’re going to try to make as accessable as we can good, quality healthcare. And that’s what we’ve done in the state of Texas.
Do you think all those people moved to the state of Texas because somehow know they couldn’t get healthcare? 5.6 million people added to the population rolls. Oh and by the way, 1.5 million jobs created between 2007 and 2014. That’s what people care about. They know they can come to the state of Texas and have access to really good healthcare, and government was not going to force them to buy insurance.
Well, last I checked, OBamaCare requires all Americans to get health insurance. And Perry seems to be saying, "We've got great health care for those who can afford it." For everybody else: you just don't count.
Watch it below, from today’s Fox News Sunday.
Can Gov. Rick Perry escape mistakes of failed 2012 campaign?
Republican presidential candidate on 'Fox News Sunday'
:^)
Mentally and Physically Healthy??