The latest Medicaid news from The Texas Tribune.
A $176.5 billion budget for the 2012-13 biennium — 5.9 percent smaller than the current budget but almost $12 billion larger than the version passed earlier by the House — won approval from the Senate Finance Committee Thursday. Full Story
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Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, has dropped the news many have been waiting to hear: He wants to attach a contingency provision to the 2012-13 budget that would withdraw $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
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House lawmakers have put their initial stamp of approval on a health care compact — a partnership with other states to ask the federal government for control over Medicaid and Medicare in Texas. Full Story
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State senators have unveiled a list of almost $5 billion in cash-flow tricks, property sales and fees that could be used to ease cuts in the state budget, but it's not enough to completely close the gap between what they have available and what they hope to spend. Full Story
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Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program could transition to a performance-based, rather than procedure-based, payment model, under bills the Senate unanimously passed today. Full Story
It doesn’t include a “sick tax.” But the Senate version of the state’s 2012-13 budget still takes direct aim at hospitals, in an effort to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and narrow the state’s revenue gap. Full Story
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The Texas Legislature is faced with a budget challenge that pits the Republican majority’s desire to cut government spending against a vulnerable target: the frail and the elderly covered by Medicaid and housed in nursing homes. Full Story
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A bill designed to find cost savings and efficiencies in Texas' costly Medicaid program — and, more controversially, expand managed care into the Rio Grande Valley — is moving to Senate budget writers for consideration. Full Story
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The Big Men on Campus in the school known as the Texas Legislature have the unenviable job of finding money that might alleviate the massive cuts outlined in House Bill 1, the general appropriations bill for the next biennium. Full Story
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Visualize the health care and Medicaid cuts in the House version of the proposed 2012-13 state budget, by county and per capita, with data compiled by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Full Story
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If congressional Republicans' proposed solution to cutting health care costs — giving states block grants to fund Medicaid — sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Full Story
Want to die comfortably? Move to Corpus Christi. A study of national hospice and hospitalization trends shows the percentage of Medicare patients dying in hospitals there, as opposed to at home or in hospice, is dropping fast. Full Story
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There’s a widely held belief around the Capitol that lawmakers balanced a troublesome budget in 2003 with a convenient underestimation of how many people would need to be served. So why not do that on purpose, and out in the open? Full Story
The first half of a legislative session is for building the relationships that get destroyed in the second half of the session. Full Story
Cutting the budget can be expensive. Something that appears to save money can, on further inspection, cost more. Family planning, for instance. Full Story
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The betting game has already begun on whether the budget battle between a more moderate Senate and a far stingier House will lead to a standoff — and a special session in the summer. The two budget committee chairmen refuse to say whether one body may have more sway than the other in the final outcome. Full Story
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Some pediatric dentists are bad-mouthing a bill that would allow mobile dental clinics to be paid by Medicaid for sealing the teeth of low-income kids at school. Full Story
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Is "family planning" a euphemism for abortion? For many House Republicans, yes. It's not that they don't understand the difference — it's that they don't trust family planning clinics not to steer women toward abortions. Full Story
Thousands of protesters chanted "They say, 'Cut back.' We say, 'Fight back'" as they marched to the Capitol this afternoon to rally against proposed budget cuts. Full Story
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Talk has resumed in the Senate — albeit quietly — about a so-called quality assurance fee, a revenue generator that would effectively tax hospitals to prop up the state’s cash-strapped Medicaid program. Full Story
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