The Texas Medical Association’s leadership body voted this weekend to support vaccinating not just young girls but young boys for the human papillomavirus. But organization officials were quick to note that the vote did not include making such vaccines mandatory, which Gov. Rick Perry tried to do for Texas schoolgirls in 2007.
Health And Human Services Commission
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Health care
TribBlog: Dog Days at DSHS
It’s an email you’d expect to see taped up at a coffee shop, not sent out from the Department of State Health Services: “Missing Puppy Found!”
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Health care
TribBlog: Medina Resurfaces — in the Texas Senate
Former gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina took her free market politics to the Texas Senate on Thursday, sharing a lively debate with lawmakers on the Health and Human Services Committee.
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Health care
TribBlog: Straus Hires Hawkins
Former HHSC Commissioner Albert Hawkins has a new job — working for the speaker of the Texas House.
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Health care
Admission Impossible
The wait to get into one of Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals — already long — may be about to get longer. Last month, as part of its attempt to comply with Gov. Rick Perry’s request that each state agency reduce its budget by 5 percent, the Department of State Health Services proposed eliminating 50 beds from four of the state’s 10 mental hospitals: San Antonio, Rusk, Terrell and North Texas Wichita. The state’s mental hospitals are already almost at full capacity, with nearly 2,500 self-admitted patients and allegedly criminal patients awaiting treatment so they can stand trial.
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Health care
The $27 Billion Question
The debate over how much federal health care reform will cost Texas put the state’s health and human services chief on the defensive on Wednesday, as he presented a budget estimate that is 20 times higher than federal projections.
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Health care
HHSC Chief Testifies on Health Care Costs
Is the health reform price tag in Texas $1.4 billion… or more like $24 billion? State Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, asks HHSC Commissioner Tom Suehs to explain why his agency’s estimate is so much higher than a federal estimate.
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Health care
TribBlog: Health Care Price Tag Growing?
State officials painted a grim picture of how much the federal health care reform will cost Texas, and cautioned lawmakers on Wednesday that the price tag will likely grow.
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Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to stay Hank Skinner’s execution, Thevenot on the myth of Texas textbook influence, Rapoport on the wild card who was just elected to the State Board of Education, Ramshaw on the price of health care reform, Philpott on the just-enacted prohibition on dropping kids from the state’s health insurance rolls, M. Smith on the best little pole tax in Texas, Ramsey on the first corporate political ad and the reality of 2011 redistricting, Stiles on the fastest-growing Texas counties, Aguilar on the vacany at top of Customs and Border Protection at the worst possible time, Galbraith on the state’s lack of renewable energy sources other than wind and its investment in efficiency, and Hu and Hamilton on the runoffs to come in House districts 52 and 127. The best of our best from March 22 to 26, 2010.
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Health care
After the Fight
A year ago, staff at the Corpus Christi State School were forcing mentally disabled wards to fight each other, and state lawmakers raced to enact new accountability measures. How are they working out? Ben Philpott, who covers politics and public policy for KUT News and the Tribune, has this report.
