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. 

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.

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.

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.

We liveblogged the full debate over HB 1, the House version of the general appropriations bills for the next biennium, which passed late Sunday night 98 to 49.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.