It’s Texas Medicaid’s time in the limelight: Federal health care reform calls for expanding it, some Republicans are angling to bag it altogether and lawmakers are gearing up for a tense debate over broadening the reach of cost-cutting managed care plans. Often lost in these conversations are the people Medicaid served and the money Texas pays to cover them. Our interactive allows you to visualize the 3 million Texans covered and the roughly $6 billion that the state spends.
Becca Aaronson
Becca Aaronson was the first product manager at the Tribune, where she worked from 2010 to 2018. As product manager, Becca managed the Tribune's website redesign, coordinates cross-departmental projects and conducted user research to improve reader experience. She previously worked on the Tribune's data visuals team as a developer and project manager, contributing to several award-winning investigative projects. She covered health care from 2012 to 2014, making waves with her coverage of women's health and the Wendy Davis abortion filibuster.
She has a bachelor’s degree in cultural theory from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Baby Blood Battle Continues [Updated]
The baby blood battle continues with a second lawsuit against the Department of State Health Services for not only storing but allegedly selling, distributing and bartering baby blood samples.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Research for a Cure
More than 800 scientists, doctors and cancer fighters are gathering in Austin this week for the Innovation in Cancer Prevention and Research Conference. The topic of conversation? The research made possible by grants from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas.
Posted in
Economy
Interactive: Senate Office Spending
State senators reduced the amount they spent on office expenses by $830,000 this year, or an average of nearly $26,000 per senator, an analysis by The Texas Tribune found.
Posted inState Government
Red November
Rick Perry won his third full term as governor of Texas on Tuesday, defeating former Houston Mayor Bill White by a convincing double-digit margin and positioning himself for a role on the national stage. And he led a Republican army that swept all statewide offices for the fourth election in a row, took out three Democratic U.S. congressmen and was on its way to a nearly two-thirds majority in the Texas House — a mark the GOP hasn’t seen since the days following the Civil War.
Posted inState Government
2010: Watkins Narrowly Holding On
With 672 of 737 precincts in Dallas County reporting, the race for district attorney remains close. Incumbent District Attorney Craig Watkins, a Democrat, is leading challenger Danny Clancy, a Republican defense lawyer, by less than 1 percentage point, 50.45 percent to 49.55 percent.
Posted inState Government
Interactive: Guv Story
On this final day of the 2010 governor’s race, we’ve put all of our coverage — the stories and blog posts and images and video and audio — into a timeline that tells the tale of the election, the political climate of Texas, the tactics and promises of Rick Perry and Bill White and our polling as the campaign unfolded.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: War of Attrition Rates
A new study by the nonprofit education advocacy group Intercultural Development Research Association says 29 percent of Texas students who enter high school as freshmen do not graduate. The attrition rate is the lowest in the 25 years since the IDRA began performing the annual study. But the group notes that while the trend is declining, millions more Texans will drop out by 2040.
Posted inState Government
TribBlog: Partisan, White, Female, Older Voters Get to Polls Earlier
If you voted today — the first day of early voting for the Nov. 2 elections — you’re probably more partisan, Anglo and a woman, according to a report released by the Center of Public Policy and Political Studies at Austin Community College.
Posted in
Energy
TribBlog: A Renaissance for State Parks
As one of 40 parks across Texas benefiting from renovation projects, Bastrop State Park will spend about $4 million on improvements financed by the sale of voter-approved bonds authorized by the Texas Legislature. By April 2011, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department expects to complete $44 million in repairs and renovations to state park infrastructure.