The latest health care news from The Texas Tribune.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says he feels “pretty good” that the coalition of states suing to halt health care reform will triumph, partly due to concerns raised during “HillaryCare” in the 1990s. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/9b0f721fe90589804334341fe8a6c7c4/BD%20INC%20Greg%20Abbott%202010)
Before adopting the Fair Defense Act in 2001, Texas was considered abysmal in legal circles when it came to providing representation for the poor. Proponents and critics of the current system agree the situation has improved since lawmakers started requiring counties to implement minimum representation standards. But has it improved enough? Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/indigentdefense003.png)
Lawmakers said Monday that the state's newborn disease screening program — which has been used to warehouse infant blood samples for biomedical and forensics research — has misled parents and given them few options to protect their babies' DNA. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/030810babyfoot.jpg)
53 percent of Texans strongly favor a repeal of federal health care reform legislation, while 24 percent strongly oppose repeal, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/020910-medicalprofessional.jpg)
Don't look now, but the Texas GOP, the party of budgetary teetotalers, has been piling up debt like a college kid with his first credit card. According to Federal Election Commission reports, this isn't exactly a new development. The Republican Party of Texas has ended every year in the red since 2001. But lately that amount has ballooned from a low of about $70,000 in 2003 to last year's high of $624,000. Now — a month out from the state party convention where 14,000 delegates will elect the chairman who will guide the faithful for the next two years — the latest FEC report, for the month of April, shows $556,000 in financial obligations. In contrast, the Texas Democratic Party currently carries about $49,000 in debt. Full Story
Grissom on the transgender marriage conundrum, Hu on the workers' comp whistleblowers, M. Smith on the Texas GOP's brush with debt, Garcia-Ditta on why student regents should vote, Aguilar on the tripling of the number of visas given by the feds to undocumented crime victims, Hamilton on the paltry number of state universities with graduation rates above 50 percent, Ramshaw and Stiles on the high percentage of Texas doctors trained in another country, Ramsey and Stiles on congressmen giving to congressmen, Galbraith on how prepared Texas is (very) for a BP-like oil spill, and my conversation with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: The best of our best from May 10 to 14, 2010. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Tribweek800px.jpg)
For the ninth event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the lieutenant governor about the budget shortfall, state-federal tensions, immigration, why he doesn't release his taxes, and his future plans. We've provided the conversation with the lite guv in three forms: full video, full audio and a transcript. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/20100512-DSC_4711.jpg)
Former employees of the Division of Workers' Compensation at the Texas Department of Insurance say their higher-ups have failed to sanction or remove dozens of physicians accused of fraudently overbilling and overtreating patients, costing insurers millions of dollars. The allegations of stalled enforcement action have sparked an inquiry by the State Auditor’s Office, records show. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/FordLockhart.jpg)
That’s right — they’re not from Texas. Newly licensed physicians enlisting to treat the state’s Medicaid and Medicare patients are more likely to have been trained at international medical schools, according to a review of state medical licensing data. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/InternationalDrs.png)
Aguilar and Miller on the immigration rally in Dallas; E. Smith interviews T. Boone Pickens and, in a two-on-one matchup, Jerry Patterson and Hector Uribe; Ramsey on how to make $2 billion disappear from the budget shortfall with creative accounting and on the $1.5 billion problem with health insurance for state employees; Kreighbaum on money bombs; Hamilton and Stiles on the remarkably similar policies for policing immigration in Texas and its largest city; Ramshaw on doctors ducking government health care programs; Kraft on the ups and downs of base closures; Grissom interviews Pulitzer-Pize wine David Oshinsky on the death penalty; M. Smith on the three Texans who want to run the state GOP; and Philpott on the lawsuits already in motion over the oil spill that's still underway in the Gulf of Mexico. The best of our best from May 3 to 7, 2010. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/tribweek050810.jpg)
Lawmakers and state employees are getting trained in CPR and defibrillator use today — almost a year after Rep. Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin, suffered a heart attack and collapsed in a Capitol elevator. He was saved by his colleague, Rep. John Zerwas, an anesthesiologist who resuscitated him with CPR. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/kuempel.jpg)
With health care reform expected to place up to 1 million more Texans on the state rolls in the next several years, experts predict a surge in the number of doctors who opt out of accepting Medicaid and Medicare patients, thanks to reimbursements well below private-payer rates. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/DrsMedicadeMedicare005.jpg)
The Texas Medical Association's leadership body voted this weekend to support vaccinating not just young girls but young boys for the human papillomavirus. But organization officials were quick to note that the vote did not include making such vaccines mandatory, which Gov. Rick Perry tried to do for Texas schoolgirls in 2007. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/02/02/vaccine_copy.jpg)
Stuffed alligators and wolves? A danger to your sleeping infant, according to the Department of Family and Protective Services' new "Room to Breathe" TV and radio campaign. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/sleeping_baby.jpg)
If history is any guide, the Legislature will turn to accounting illusions to mask large portions of a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion. Trouble is, such trickery is a bet on the economy roaring back to life — and that's no sure thing. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/shellgame-money.jpg)
It's 1983. Oil prices are in the toilet. The Texas economy is suddenly and unexpectedly reeling. Lawmakers, who happen to be in session, have a choice between big cuts or new taxes or something creative. Comptroller Bob Bullock and his top propeller-heads find a creative out — a way to balance the budget without big cuts or tax hikes. Full Story
Stiles and Thevenot's searchable database of more than 5,800 public schools, Thevenot on why smaller high schools are better, Garcia-Ditta on the possible unification of Big Bend National Park with Mexico, Grissom on what's likely to happen on immigration reform this year (nothing), Hamilton on how Admm Bobby Ray Inman is managing a crisis, Hu on the health care reform straw man, Ramsey on the no-shoo-in-for-the-experienced-guy special election in Senate District 22, Philpott on the likely post-Arizona immigration brawls, Ramshaw on the emergence of concierge care as a response to health care reform, Aguilar on how Texas will soon become Cuba's top U.S. trading partner, Stiles and Babalola's searchable database of more 160,000 inmates in Texas prisons, M. Smith on the depressing fact that every single U.S. Attorney position in Texas is now vacant, and my on-camera sit-down with Texas Transportation Commission chair Deirdre Delisi. The best of our best from April 26 to 30, 2010. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/TribWeekMay1.jpg)
Texas will not commit to creating temporary health care pools for high-risk patients. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/5e39e6b189ac36dfde5aeeee5fff5426/BD%20INC%20Rick%20Perry%2002%202009)
A joint effort among the U.S. Census Bureau, Valley lawmakers and community groups is smoothing over the tensions of the past couple of weeks, when the bureau announced that 95 percent of residents of South Texas colonias were not getting their Census forms in the mail. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/777b47d299ef0266a6480db735d98d28/BD%20INC%20Census%202010)
Republican lawmakers in Texas may despise the federal health care overhaul, but it's politically opportunitistic: They get to blame the staggering budget shortfall to come on the anticipated state share of the cost of reform. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/videos/Screen_shot_2010-04-27_at_5.31.36_PM.png)