By Arielle Kane
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has blamed the recent Uvalde shooting on the shooter’s mental health problems. “We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,” the governor said last Wednesday in the aftermath of the shooting. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it.”
I don’t think anyone would argue that someone who murders defenseless young children is right in the head. But setting aside the mental state of this particular teenager, if Gov. Abbott believes that mental health is the problem, why hasn’t he done more to improve it?
Gov. Abbott has been governor since 2015, and since then, there have been roughly 13 mass shooting events in his state. Yet he has done nothing to expand access to mental health care. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country, with 17.3 percent of its population without health insurance. This is roughly twice the national average. Furthermore, Texas also has the most uninsured children in the country—roughly 1 million. Mental Health America rated the state dead last for overall access to mental health services.
But Gov. Abbott hasn’t just failed to expand access to health coverage; he has actively cut it.
Read the full piece in Newsweek.
