Texas' Women's Health Program may be circling the drain. Sen. Bob Deuell says he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to bring up a bill to renew the family planning and preventative care program — and Rep. Garnet Coleman says his House bill is stuck.

In their latest effort to remind Washington how much they hate federal health reform, House lawmakers gave early approval tonight to one measure to hold "Obamacare" at bay and deflected, at least temporarily, another that is directed at the individual mandate for health insurance.

House lawmakers gave an early OK tonight to a measure that would stop health insurance plans from requiring dentists to agree to discounted fees for services not covered by the policy. The bill has already passed the Senate. 

Texas hospitals have a pointed message for the lawmakers hashing out the final details of the 2012-13 budget: The proposed cuts hit them too hard. 

Across the nation, U.S. House Republicans are getting an earful from their constituents about a GOP budget proposal to overhaul federal Medicare. But that message hasn’t made its way to Texas, where state lawmakers are still angling to take control of the program. 

House lawmakers voted Tuesday night to continue the duties and operations of the Texas Department of Insurance, giving early approval to the agency’s Sunset bill.

House lawmakers have given an early okay to Rep. Lois Kolkhorst’s bill to ask Washington for a block grant to run Medicaid — the joint state-federal health care program for children, the disabled and the very poor — as Texas sees fit.

Lawmakers have given early approval to a bill to reform the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, a quasi-governmental insurer of last resort that has been the subject of ethics concerns.

House lawmakers have sent the controversial abortion sonogram bill to the governor's desk — after a last-ditch effort by disability rights advocates to change language they called highly offensive.

Advocates for shuttering Texas’ institutions for the disabled thought they had the numbers on their side: a budget crisis so severe that lawmakers would have to close some state-supported living centers. With less than a month left in the session, their hopes are largely dashed.

The House has tentatively voted to let rural, critical-access hospitals in counties with populations of 50,000 or less hire doctors — partially lifting a long-standing ban on hospitals directly employing physicians.  

House lawmakers have given an early endorsement to Rep. Lois Kolkhorst’s bill to protect Texans’ private medical information.  

A bill directing the Department of Motor Vehicles to create an anti-abortion license plate to raise money for crisis pregnancy centers got an early OK from the House — and staved off a flurry of amendments from Democrats. 

It’s big tobacco vs. little in the effort to smoke out new revenue for the Texas budget. Large tobacco companies, which fork over half a billion dollars to the state every year as part of a 1998 lawsuit settlement, want small cigarette manufacturers to pay their share. 

Despite some efforts to lessen the blow to pediatric health care providers, Texas’ proposed budget cuts will likely have a disproportionate effect on children’s hospitals, which treat the state’s youngest and poorest patients.