The latest health care news from The Texas Tribune.
If federal health care reform stays on the books, it will help 5 million Texans get health insurance and increase state health care spending by roughly 10 percent in the next five years, according to the RAND Corporation. Full Story
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Are Texas doctors hamstrung by unfounded complaints? Reps. Bill Zedler and Fred Brown think so. But the bills they've filed to address the issue are largely opposed by the state's biggest physician organization. Full Story
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Lawmakers agree that curbing elective inductions of labor and so-called “convenience” cesarean sections would prevent premature births and save the state money. But how best to do it has left child welfare advocates and hospitals at odds. Full Story
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The Texas House started with a $164.5 billion budget and ended with the same total. But lawmakers spent the better part of a weekend making changes inside the budget for 2012-13 before giving it their approval, 98 to 49. Full Story
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Today, as we vote on House Bill 1, we are in the position of squeezing water out of rock, and the process is hard and dirty work. Democrats will say there is no water in the rock. They are wrong. Full Story
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Insurers in Texas have stopped offering new child-only policies in protest over a provision of the federal health care overhaul. For children being raised by their grandparents, there are few options left. Full Story
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Numbers aren’t all that’s buried in the budget. Lawmakers have filed hundreds of amendments that are political in nature, from repealing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants to trying to push Planned Parenthood out of the family planning business. Full Story
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With budget deliberation looming in the Legislature, Gretch Sanders of KUT News reports that funding cuts to one health program could mean a death sentence for some. Full Story
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Hundreds of people rallied at the Capitol today to urge lawmakers to maintain state spending on Medicaid and CHIP, the health care programs for children, the disabled and the very poor. Full Story
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File this in the "this hasn't happened yet?" category: The Texas Legislature has taken one big step toward banishing the "R" word from state statutes. Full Story
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Williamson County is home to Texas' healthiest residents, and Marion County is the least healthy in the state, according to the annual County Health Rankings. Full Story
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State Rep. John Zerwas, the Simonton Republican who has filed legislation to implement one of the key elements of federal health care reform, said his bill may be permanently stuck. Full Story
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Two sweeping bills to reward patient outcomes — as opposed to the current system that incentivizes overutilization — got a warm welcome in a Senate committee hearing this morning. Full Story
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Texas hospital officials, anticipating a House budget vote later this week, warned this morning that the current proposal could mean funding cuts of up to 37 percent for some hospitals. Full Story
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Fort Bend County, home of Sugar Land, is almost as diverse as the Bronx in New York. Several other Texas counties rank high on the list. Full Story
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Rural hospitals are one step closer to being able to directly hire doctors — something they say is necessary to attract new doctors to rural areas, but is not currently allowed by Texas law. Full Story
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Behold the mighty freshman Republicans of the Texas House of Representatives. They’re supposed to be quiet, to bow to their tenured colleagues, to stay out of the way. But here they are, quietly and deferentially exercising some clout on the only piece of legislation that absolutely has to pass: the state budget. Full Story
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The House Appropriations Committee, on a party-line vote, advanced the next state budget, sending to the full House a bill that spends $164.5 billion — about $23 billion less than state officials say they need to maintain current services. Full Story
The cost of common medical procedures paid for by Medicaid varies dramatically from hospital to hospital and region to region, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of claims by and payments to hundreds of hospitals across the state. Full Story
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M. Smith on the continuing controversy over Beaumont's school administrators, Tan on the deepening divide over the consequences of the House budget, Hamilton on the latest in the fight over higher ed accountability, Grissom on young inmates in adult prisons, Aguilar on the voter ID end game, Tan and Hasson's Rainy Day Fund infographic, Ramsey on the coming conflict over school district reserves, M. Smith and Aguilar on Laredo ISD's missing Social Security numbers, Galbraith on environmental regulators bracing for budget cuts and Ramshaw on greater scrutiny of neonatal intensive care units: The best of our best content from March 21 to 25, 2011. Full Story
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