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.

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.

Thirteen states expanded Medicaid or CHIP eligibility last year, and 14 states made improvements in enrollment and renewal procedures. Texas didn't fall into either of these categories, but the state held steady in 2010, while making improvements in technology to prepare for the roll-out of federal health care reform.

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.

Texas cannot walk away from Medicaid, and Gov. Rick Perry agrees, Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs said this afternoon, hours after releasing the agency’s long-awaited report on the feasibility of dropping out of the federal matching program.

The number of adult Texans with diabetes is expected to quadruple over the next three decades, a massive spike that demographers and health care experts attribute to the state’s aging population and obesity epidemic.

Hu on the Perry-Bush rift, Ramshaw on the adult diaper wars, Ramsey's interview with conservative budget-slasher Arlene Wohlgemuth, Galbraith on the legislature's water agenda (maybe), M. Smith on Don McLeroy's last stand (maybe), Philpott on the end of earmarks (maybe), Hamilton on the merger of the Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Education Agency (maybe), Aguilar on Mexicans seeking refuge from drug violence, Grissom on inadequate health care in county jails and my conversation with Houston Mayor Annise Parker: The best of our best from November 15 to 19, 2010.

A week after newly emboldened Republicans in the Texas Legislature floated a radical cost-saving proposal — withdrawing from the federal Medicaid program — health care experts, economists and think tanks are trying to determine just how possible it would be. The answer? It’s complicated. But it’s not stopping nearly a dozen other states, frantic over budget shortfalls and anticipating new costs from federal health care reform, from exploring something that was, until recently, unthinkable.

A barrage of abuse scandals, a federal investigation and the shrinking state budget could be just what disability advocates need to achieve a longtime goal: fewer state institutions and more community-based living services for developmentally disabled Texans who can’t care for themselves.

The politically powerful hospital was poised to lose millions in Medicaid reimbursements under a hospital funding shuffle — until it reached out to lawmakers with its concerns.

In the wake of high-profile incidents of abuse, state health officials want to boost payments to Texas' institutions for the disabled by $25,000 per patient per year. But the proposed Medicaid rate change has drawn the ire of Texas’ disability community, which wants to see the facilities shuttered rather than propped up.

As the reality of health care reform sinks in, physician-owned specialty hospitals are on edge. Some are scouring the law for loopholes; others want to sell out to corporations. 

If you're going to get injured on the job, don't do it in Texas.

Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, wants the attorney general to decide whether a Texas family planning rule — one that bans the state's Women's Health Program from contracting with clinics that "perform or promote" abortions — is constitutional.

At a hearing today, the Department of Family and Protective Services will consider stricter caregiver-to-child ratios for child care centers — but improved care for Texas toddlers could also mean less income for child care providers and higher tuition for families.

A Houston psychiatrist who uses clinically controversial brain scans to diagnose everything from anxiety to marital discord. A Plano music therapist who believes his Peruvian pan flute tunes cure mental illness. And a Beaumont child psychologist reprimanded for continuing to prescribe to a proven drug abuser. These physicians have written more prescriptions for potent antipsychotic drugs to the state’s neediest patients than any other doctors in Texas.