Texas hospital administrators aren't thrilled about the 10 percent Medicaid provider rate cut included in the House's proposed budget. But what they fear more is the proposed expansion of Medicaid managed care, which could force them to forgo a combined $1 billion a year in federal funding.

As House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, laid out the first grim round of proposed cuts on Wednesday, even some of his Republican colleagues couldn't stifle their objections. House Democrats went a step further, calling the cuts "akin to asking an anorexic person to lose more weight." 

Residents of Hidalgo and other nearby counties live to be 80 years old, two years longer than the Texas average. Meanwhile, in parts of East Texas, residents live much shorter lives.

Many of the longest lives in Texas are lived in an unlikely place: along the impoverished border with Mexico, where residents often live until age 80 and beyond. Explanations for this so-called "Hispanic Paradox" range from theories about differences in the diet, faith and family values of first-generation South Texans to suggestions that natural selection is at play in immigration patterns. 

The proof of East Texas' live-hard, die-young culture is in the bread pudding — and the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, the drive-through tobacco barns and the doughnut shops by the dozen. In a community where heavy eating and chain smoking are a way of life, where poverty, hard-headedness and even suspicion hinder access to basic health care, residents die at an average age of 73, or seven years earlier than the longest-living Texans, according to a preliminary county-by-county analysis by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Federal health care reform’s biggest benefit for young adults — a mandate that insurance providers cover dependents until they reach age 26 — won’t apply to thousands of 25-year-old Texans for one simple reason: Their parents work for the state. The federal rule, which went into effect in late September, required all insurance providers to extend their cap to 26 at the start of their next “plan year.” For many private providers, that began Jan. 1. But the Texas Employees Retirement System plan year doesn't begin until next September, meaning 5,500 25-year-olds will miss out. 

The 82nd Texas Legislature convenes in Austin this week, and while it’s not as much fun as the circus — usually — it’s more important and does have its share of comedy and drama. 

Advocates for shuttering Texas' institutions for people with disabilities say they have a big plus in their column this session: the state’s giant budget crunch. 

When foster kids bounce from placement to placement, they leave their belongings with state child welfare workers — where advocates say they often get misplaced, given to the wrong child or even stolen.

Texas may be reddening, but Dallas County’s turning a darker shade of blue. While the GOP picked up hotly contested Dallas-area state House seats in November, the county voted for challenger Bill White over incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry by a margin of 12 percentage points. Straight-ticket voters also helped Democratic District Attorney Craig Watkins cling to his office in a squeaker and gave the County Commissioners Court its first Democratic majority in nearly 30 years.

A class-action suit being filed in U.S. district court today alleges that thousands of Texans with severe mental and physical disabilities are confined in nursing homes with no access to rehabilitative care.

The tort reform state lawmakers passed in 2003 made it more difficult for patients to win damages in any health care setting, but none more so than emergency rooms, where plaintiffs must prove doctors acted with "willful and wanton" negligence. Tort reform advocates say the law is needed to protect ER doctors operating in volatile environments. But medical malpractice attorneys argue the threshold is nearly impossible to cross. “You’d have to be a Nazi death camp guard to meet this standard,” says one.

British tourist Thomas Reeve's murder in an Amarillo bar last fall shattered his family, which has been unable to claim financial assistance from the state’s Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund because he wasn't a U.S. resident.

Already facing a record budget shortfall, Texas has received more bad news: The portion of state Medicaid costs paid by the federal government is about to drop. Texas’ Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, a mathematical formula linked to a state's per-capita personal income, will fall more than 2 percentage points in late 2011, equivalent to a $1.2 billion hit. Only two states — Louisiana and North Dakota — will face a bigger percentage drop. And that’s after federal stimulus funds that have been artificially enhancing this match dry up in the spring, another blow to cash-strapped state Medicaid programs in Texas and across the nation.

The goal of the legislation was lofty: to help people who have been exonerated clear their criminal records, quickly and completely. The unexpected result? News organizations must pay hundreds of dollars in monthly fees to keep a copy of the state’s criminal records database.