Feds restore billions in halted payments to Texas hospitals, but the fight over uninsured care continues
The money reimburses hospitals for the services they provide to Medicaid patients in Texas. Full Story
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Karen Brooks Harper
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Karen Brooks Harper reported on the state budget and health and human services from 2020 to 2024. An alumna of the Missouri School of Journalism, Karen arrived in Texas in 1995 to join the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, spent several years in Laredo and Mexico covering immigration and the drug war for Knight-Ridder newspapers, and has covered Texas politics for more than two decades for news organizations including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Morning News and Reuters.
Past Contributions
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![Yesenia Alvarado holds her daughter, Medicaid patient Melanie Almaraz, 2, while waiting to see Dr. Alberto Vasquez for treatment of a fever at Su Clinica Familiar in Harlingen, Texas on Jul. 9, 2013.]()
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His public custody battle helped ignite a movement against transgender health care for kids. Will it carry him to the Texas House?
Jeff Younger sees himself as the “tip of the spear” in an effort that led the state to investigate parents of transgender children for child abuse. Full Story
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![Jeff Younger stands outside the Denton County Republican Party Headquarters in Denton on March 10, 2022.]()
Credit: Emil Lippe for The Texas Tribune -
State GOP leaders win big in Texas legislative primaries
Almost all the preferred candidates of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan nabbed enough votes to head into the November general election. And nearly all sitting House and Senate members seeking to return to the Texas Capitol kept their seats. Full Story
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Transgender Texas kids are terrified after governor orders that parents be investigated for child abuse
Some experts doubt that classifying gender-affirming care as child abuse would hold up in court, but families still feel targeted by Gov. Greg Abbott’s new order Full Story
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![Adelyn Vigil, 13, a transgender girl, poses for a photo in the Rio Grande Valley on Sunday, February 27, 2022. In response to Governor Abbott’s order for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate parents that provide gender-affirming care to their kids, Adelyn says that, “The thought of me being separated makes me cry and to think that my mom could go to jail for it and not being able to see her anymore.”
Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune]()
Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune -
An end to the omicron surge is in sight, but relief comes slowly in hard-hit Laredo
COVID-19 numbers are plummeting statewide, but on Texas’ southern border with Mexico, Laredo is still battling its fourth surge. Full Story
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![Families and friends watch the IBC Youth Parade Under the Stars in Laredo on Feb. 17, 2022.]()
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From obscurity to a Nobel Prize nomination: Houston scientists acclaimed for their patent-free COVID-19 vaccine
Corbevax, a low-cost coronavirus vaccine created in Houston, could be a better weapon against COVID-19 by reaching the unvaccinated in poorer countries. Full Story
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![Maria Bottazzi replaces vials of the RBD-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine into a freezer at the Tropical Medicine Lab at Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston on Oct. 5, 2021.]()
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“Light at the end of the tunnel”: Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations down as omicron wave appears to crest
Texas falls short, again, of the pandemic record for COVID-19 hospitalizations, while daily deaths are expected to continue rising for several more days. Full Story
Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune -
Omicron pushes Texas ICUs to the brink
A staffing crisis and the surge from the omicron variant have pushed the number of Texas ICU beds to a new record low. The shortage affects not just patients with the coronavirus, but every Texan seeking serious medical care. Full Story
Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune -
For Texas children, COVID-19 hospitalizations are outpacing vaccinations
Last fall, just as younger Texans received the green light to get vaccinated, omicron came rushing in, sending more of them to the hospital. Full Story
Credit: Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune -
Omicron on track to shatter Texas' COVID-19 hospitalization record
“The situation in Texas is that it probably won’t reach the peak [for cases] until the second half of January,” a top researcher said. Full Story
Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune
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