AUSTIN (August 18, 2009)-- Federal health care reform proposals will cost Texas taxpayers billions of dollars, Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday as he announced the results of a study of the plan by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Texas think tank.

Perry stressed the importance of allow states to develop health care reform plans rather than trying mandate reforms from the top down.

“It’s clear Washington has no interest in allowing states to develop their own tailored solutions to problems that affect their citizens,”. Perry said.

“Instead we have a federal government bearing down on the states, preparing to take greater control through mandates and trampling innovation through runaway costs.

“The health care reform legislation currently being considered not only poses a serious threat to patients and providers, but will also cost Texas taxpayers tens of billions of dollars over the next 10 years without significantly improving care for Texans, he said.

The study finds that the proposals now being debated would add more than $285 billion to the deficit over the next decade, according to TPPF Senior Fellow Donna Arduin, a partner in the economic research firm Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics.

She also said the legislation that would provide $1 trillion more in federal health care spending would slow the state and national economies and would still leave 30 million Americans uninsured.