I’ve been wondering if the plan to extend Medicaid to more people (higher percentage levels of the poverty rate) includes planning to make states open up Medicaid to more of these people. I wonder about this, because right now in Texas, who gets Medicaid is very limited. If you are dirt poor and don’t have kids, aren’t a pregnant woman or woman with breast or cervical cancer, an old person or a person with a disability, or a child yourself, you do not qualify. Yes, Lin and I could be living on the streets eating dirt for dinner, but due to our lacking offspring (or disabilities or cancer), we’d be out of luck on getting onto Medicaid.

And Texas wonders why it has one of the highest rates of uninsured?

I don’t know how it is in other states, but I have heard people from other states suggesting to poor single people they should apply. Might work elsewhere, but not in Texas. Better start having kids if you’re poor and want some help getting health care!

You’d think us non-kid-having people don’t pay taxes too. We do, and often more than people with kids who get all kinds of tax breaks. This used to not bother me, because I want other people’s kids to be educated and healthy, but now it’s starting to get under my skin as our childless state has begun to make it seem like we are second-class citizens.