Behold the mighty freshman Republicans of the Texas House of Representatives. They’re supposed to be quiet, to bow to their tenured colleagues, to stay out of the way. But here they are, quietly and deferentially exercising some clout on the only piece of legislation that absolutely has to pass: the state budget.
Medicaid
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Health care
Skimpy
The House Appropriations Committee, on a party-line vote, advanced the next state budget, sending to the full House a bill that spends $164.5 billion — about $23 billion less than state officials say they need to maintain current services.
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Health care
Cost of Procedures Varies Widely by Hospital, Area
The cost of common medical procedures paid for by Medicaid varies dramatically from hospital to hospital and region to region, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of claims by and payments to hundreds of hospitals across the state.
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Health care
Leo Linbeck III: The TT Interview
The Houston builder and Health Care Compact Alliance vice chair on how an interstate compact could fix health care in Texas — and give the state some semblance of local control over what he calls an unsustainable health care system.
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Economy
House, Senate Budget Goals Could Lead to Battle
As the House prepares for a vote on its budget bill, Senate lawmakers are hinting that they’re looking to spend more than their counterparts on public education — setting the stage for a budget battle.
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Health care
Activists Rally for Home Health Care
Health care providers who treat profoundly disabled children at home face major budget cuts this session — cuts they say would devastate their industry and cost the state more in the long run.
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Health care
Surging Growth of Neonatal ICUs Brings Increased Budget Scrutiny
State health officials, searching for solutions to Texas’ budget shortfall, are eying neonatal intensive care units, which they fear are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care.
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Health care
Lawmakers Target Federal Health Reform
Federal health care reform was the clear antagonist at today’s meeting of the House Select Committee on State Sovereignty. Republican lawmakers laid out a dozen bills aimed at getting the federal government out of Texas’ health care system.
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Health care
Rural Hospitals Hope to Change Hiring Law
A Texas law dating back to the 1800s that keeps hospitals from directly hiring doctors comes before lawmakers today, in a flurry of bills designed to remove the ban — either for an individual hospital district, or for all the state’s rural hospitals.
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Health care
Cecile Richards: The TT Interview
The president of Planned Parenthood and daughter of the late Democratic Gov. Ann Richards on Republican lawmakers’ efforts to defund her organization, a Texas attorney general’s opinion she says will keep low-income women from preventative care, and how her mother would’ve handled all of this.
