A new study from the Commonwealth Fund shows that Texas ranks almost dead last when it comes to women’s health issues. Only Mississippi is worse.
It’s a source of constant frustration that Texas has one of the biggest and most innovative medical centers on the planet in Houston, but that overall health averages have continuously fallen because of Republican culture wars on Medicaid, gender care, and reproductive choice. The Commonwealth Fund, which has been measuring healthcare nationwide since 2006, looks at a variety of factors, including number of people who forgo health care because of expense, physicians per capita, and infant mortality.
The numbers are grim. Texas rates 38th in the nation for overall healthcare outcomes related to childbirth, including both physical and mental health. The state is last in affordable women’s care, and second-to-last for quality in prenatal and postpartum care.
Unsurprisingly, Texas ranks very high on the number of uninsured women. The state is by far the largest to still refuse the Medicaid expansion offered to states by the Affordable Care Act. Governor Greg Abbott has been steadfast in opposing the expansion, calling it a tax increase waiting to happen. As a result, roughly 2 million Texans go without health insurance.
That becomes a problem in women’s health when combined with the state’s near-total ban on abortion. Currently, the procedure is prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are even pregnant. While it’s still technically legal for these people to leave the state to obtain an abortion, it makes the procedure quite costly.
This increases the number of poor women who have to remain pregnant against their will, and this population is far more likely to not have insurance because of Texas’s famously stingy safety net. They forgo care, and the quality of their health declines. That is the most obvious explanation of the state’s continued descent in healthcare quality as measured by the Commonwealth Fund.
Another side effect of the anti-abortion and anti-Medicaid expansion extremism is the loss of providers. Doctors, nurses, and techs that specialize in reproductive care increasingly find that their patients can’t afford to pay them. On top of that, medical professionals risk fines and jail time if their care results in an abortion no matter how medically necessary.
With the environment increasingly hostile to reproductive healthcare professionals, they are leaving the state in droves. The Commonwealth Fund shows Texas ranks 44 in number of reproductive medical providers per 100,000 women.
There is no sugar coating the numbers. Texas is not a safe place to be a sick woman, and that goes double for a pregnant one. Until Texas Republican leadership abandons their crusade against reproductive healthcare and Medicaid expansion, the state is headed for last place in the very near future.