Abbott has long opposed extending state-funded health coverage to 1.5 million Texans under the Affordable Care Act. But a spokesman for the governor did not rule out a possible coverage expansion under a new Trump administration block grant policy.
When Susan Peake moved to Austin from Denver in 2018, she traded one kind of safety net for another.
In Colorado, she’d received state-funded health insurance coverage, which she credits with saving her from financial ruin after she suffered a heart attack requiring double-bypass surgery. In Texas, though she did not qualify for free health insurance, she had a room at her sister’s house, where she hoped to save some money while she recovered.
But after a disagreement with her brother-in-law, things spiraled out of control for Peake, 52. She moved out of her sister’s house, she said, and began staying on friends’ couches. Before long, she was camping in parks and sleeping on bus stop benches.
Now Peake lives at Gov. Greg Abbott’s temporary campsite for people experiencing homelessness, in a tent pitched on an unmarked patch of asphalt between parking spots 61 and 62 at a state-owned lot.
“I feel safe out here,” she said on a recent cloudless day. But losing out on health insurance coverage under Medicaid was “a big challenge” for Peake, who said she takes medication for bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, in addition to problems associated with her heart and gastrointestinal tract. Often, while camping, “I didn’t take as much medicine to try to make it last longer,” she said.
Peake’s experience illuminates the challenges of finding health care for the homeless in Texas, which is among the least generous states when it comes to offering publicly funded health coverage to the poor.
For years, Abbott has opposed expanding Texas Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program, to cover poor adults as most other states do. But President Donald Trump’s administration recently announced that states with expanded coverage will have greater flexibility to cut costs in Medicaid, an idea long championed by Republicans. A spokesman for the governor said this week that Abbott is exploring options with the federal government.
Since Austin’s City Council relaxed ordinances last year that prohibited lying and camping in public areas, Abbott has hurled criticism at city leaders for promoting “lawlessness.” On Twitter this month, Abbott said fixing homelessness was “easy” and involved, among other interventions, providing mental health and drug addiction help.
Advocates for the poor were quick to point out that Medicaid could help pay for those services for nearly a million Texans, including many experiencing homelessness.