Chupacabra Report

The Chrons daily rundown of the 80th legislature today featured Sen. Robert Talton (R- Pleistocene) who found fault with the bill to reform the Childrens Health Insurance Program and sent it back to committee, saying that he hopes it doesn’t come back. “I believe in limited government. I think people ought to pay for health insurance themselves,” he said. And “I didn’t have health insurance when I was growing up. Back when I was a kid, doctors didn’t charge for office visits and shots were 5 bucks.”

It’s hard to know where to start on this. Houston Rep. Sylvester Turner estimated that “there must be hundreds, if not more uninsured children in Pasadena Republican Talton’s district,” and that it would cost the state $78 million to cover the extra children covered under the bills changes, money that would be matched by more than $100 million in federal funds.

Talton won’t vote to clean up the air in his district, and he won’t vote to care for children who get sick from breathing there. A REAL fiscal conservative would fund the CHIPS program because the care they’re deferring, denying, and ultimately delivering at the emergency room ends up being much more expensive, even ignoring the costs in human suffering and degradation.

How does this pompous ass get re-elected?