When Texas officials announced earlier this month they would allow Medicaid to pay for mosquito repellent for low-income pregnant women — a move meant to stop the spread of the Zika virus — health care advocates greeted the news with tempered enthusiasm. They saw it as a tacit endorsement by Republican state leaders of the usefulness of the federal-state insurance program for the poor and disabled in the face of a public health emergency, but they wished the state had gone further. As Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s health leaders make public service announcements saying Texas is on heightened alert for mosquito-to-human transmission of the virus, which has been linked to birth defects, many advocates for the uninsured have a different goal in mind. They want to use the state’s own words to spur Republican leaders to consider a massive expansion of subsidized health care to the low-income Texans they say are most vulnerable to the disease. “One of the things that surprised me a little

Source: Texas Public Radio