Medicaid fraud officials have won rave reviews for a new dollar-recovery strategy that lets them freeze funding to accused health providers while they pursue an investigation. But some doctors and dentists say there's no due process. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold federal health reform — but to make the Medicaid expansion it requires essentially optional — has created, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, a lot of “known unknowns” for Texas. 

About 150 Texans gathered in front of Gov. Rick Perry's Capitol office on Tuesday to protest his announcement that Texas would not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange.

Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said Monday morning. 

As the ranks of the obese in Texas have swelled, so too has state and federal lawmakers’ comfort with forking over taxpayer dollars for weight-loss surgery for the elderly and the indigent.

Independent pharmacists say they see a system working against them with the state's switch this spring to Medicaid managed care.

A California hospital company facing allegations it inflated disease diagnoses to bill Medicare for more expensive conditions — including a form of Third World malnutrition rarely found in the U.S. — is edging into Texas.

Economists don’t think the loss of state jobs will have a significant continuing impact on the Texas economy.

The clock is ticking for reproductive health clinics that are affiliated with abortion providers — the state will force Planned Parenthood and others like them out of the Women’s Health Program early next month.

State Rep. Barbara Nash, R-Arlington, is running for re-election in a district that shares only 20 percent of the population with the district that originally elected her two years ago.

A federal judge's ruling this morning means that the state may begin removing Planned Parenthood and other so-called abortion "affiliates" from the Women's Health Program, despite a district judge's Monday ruling to the contrary.

Aaronson on rate increases at TWIA, E. Smith asks Sen. Wendy Davis about surviving in hostile political territory, Selvidge's lovely slideshow on the rebirth of the burned out Bastrop State Park, Aguilar on the drawbacks to putting troops on the Mexican border, Galbraith on the expansion in uranium mining, Hamilton on posses in public schools, Murphy charts congressional campaign finance for the first quarter, Ramshaw on the merger of three regional Planned Parenthoods in Texas, Tan on the state's plans for the Women's Health Program and Root on the governor's re-election talk: The best of our best content from April 16 to 20, 2012.

UPDATED: Texas health officials have delivered their much-anticipated plans for taking over the Medicaid Women's Health Program. They want to assume full responsibility in November. Federal officials say they're considering the plan. 

Aaronson maps Medicaid patients' access to pharmacies, Aguilar on Mexicans in exile, Batheja on an unlikely threat to a veteran lawmaker's re-election, Galbraith and Murphy interactively track reservoir levels around the state, Grissom on the ringleaders who rule the state's largest youth lockup, Hamilton on how much Texas professors are paid, Ramsey on who's conservative, Ramshaw and Tan on the latest Planned Parenthood kerfuffle, Root on what Santorum's exit means for the Texas primary, and parts 4 (by M. Smith) and 5 (by Tan and Dehn) of our series on school district closures: The best of our best content from April 9-13, 2012.

Planned Parenthood branches in Texas have filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to block their exclusion from the state's Women's Health Program.

From contraception and cancer screenings to "Obamacare" and state physician shortages, here's a look at the month ahead in Texas health policy. 

Aaronson interactively maps Texas Medicaid providers, Aguilar talks legalization with the head of the Drug Policy Alliance, Galbraith on farmers watering what they know won't grow, Grisson sits down with exoneree Michael Morton, Hamilton on the elusive $10,000 college degree, Murphy et al. update the 2012 election brackets, Ramsey on Bill Ratliff's frank budget analysis, Ramshaw on a hospital where the overweight need not apply, Root on Joe Straus' primary opponent and Tan rounds up reactions to the Supreme Court's health care hearings: The best of our best content from March 26-30, 2012.

A Republican former lieutenant governor laments the cuts in public education spending and the Legislature's reliance on borrowing and accounting tricks to balance the state budget.