The latest Medicaid news from The Texas Tribune.
Less than two days after approving a state budget that cuts $23 billion from current spending, Rep. Jim Pitts says House leaders are already talking among themselves about how much more money they'd be willing to spend. Full Story
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Texas need to address its structural deficit during the current session, or it will face even deeper financial problems in two years than it faces today, senate leaders said Tuesday afternoon. Full Story
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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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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The Houston builder and Health Care Compact Alliance vice chair on how an interstate compact could fix health care in Texas — and give the state some semblance of local control over what he calls an unsustainable health care system. Full Story
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As the House prepares for a vote on its budget bill, Senate lawmakers are hinting that they're looking to spend more than their counterparts on public education — setting the stage for a budget battle. Full Story
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Health care providers who treat profoundly disabled children at home face major budget cuts this session — cuts they say would devastate their industry and cost the state more in the long run. Full Story
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State health officials, searching for solutions to Texas’ budget shortfall, are eying neonatal intensive care units, which they fear are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care. Full Story
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Federal health care reform was the clear antagonist at today’s meeting of the House Select Committee on State Sovereignty. Republican lawmakers laid out a dozen bills aimed at getting the federal government out of Texas' health care system. Full Story
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A Texas law dating back to the 1800s that keeps hospitals from directly hiring doctors comes before lawmakers today, in a flurry of bills designed to remove the ban — either for an individual hospital district, or for all the state's rural hospitals. Full Story
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The president of Planned Parenthood and daughter of the late Democratic Gov. Ann Richards on Republican lawmakers’ efforts to defund her organization, a Texas attorney general’s opinion she says will keep low-income women from preventative care, and how her mother would’ve handled all of this. Full Story
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