President Obama traveled to Dallas Wednesday, where he was scheduled to meet with navigators and to renew
his efforts challenging Republican governors to put people over politics and expand Medicaid.
The White House estimates that in Texas, 1.2 million individuals are caught in that divide.
"If it makes sense anywhere to expand Medicaid, it makes sense in Texas," said San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro (D), who said poor and uninsured residents put a strain on state and municipal budgets.
It makes sense to the people of Texas, too. At least that's what they told pollsters in a
new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. The polling was focused on how people feel about the various components of the law. While only 33 percent of Texans polled support the law, "big majorities like many of its components." That includes Medicaid expansion:
Two-thirds of voters support giving states the option to expand their Medicaid programs for low-income, uninsured adults. That majority spanned the ideological spectrum on an issue that Texas lawmakers ducked last session, opting not to expand that coverage.
More than 35 percent of them said they "strongly" support that provision, while some of the provisions of the law are even more popular.
That's probably one of the reasons
Texas' Republican leaders are doing their damnedest to make Obamacare fail. If it turns out pretty darned good for people, even Texans, they're going to start wondering what all the fuss was about. They're going to start wondering why their elected Republican leaders worked so hard to keep it away from them. They're going to start wondering why in the hell their Republican leaders spent all their time fighting this instead of doing stuff that might have actually helped them.
When voters start asking those kinds of questions, Republicans have to worry. See Cuccinelli, Ken.