A federal court’s ruling on Monday declaring parts of federal health care reform unconstitutional elicited plenty of reaction in Texas, which is part of a separate attempt to repeal the new law. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports.
Medicaid
Posted in
Health care
TribBlog: Backtracking On McAllen?
New Yorker writer Atul Gawande put McAllen’s medical providers on the defensive in a 2009 article, claiming the region’s health care was among the most expensive in the U.S. In a new blog post, Gawande seems to backtrack — at least in part.
Posted in
Health care
Fat and Skinny
That steady drip, drip, drip in the biennial Scare the Speaker thing has been plugged for the moment. Scratching around for other amusements, we came upon a congressional map for Texas showing who’s got too few and too many people in their congressional districts.
Posted in
Health care
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Galbraith on wood chips and green energy, Aguilar on why conservatives might get the appeal of medical marijuana, Philpott on an effort to uncloak the hidden costs of government, Ramshaw and Galewitz of Kaiser Health News on federal plans to send less money to Texas for Medicaid, Aaronson visualizes who’s currently covered by Medicaid and how the billions are spent, E. Smith’s interview on higher ed and the “speaker drama” with Dan Branch, Hamilton on the costs of a losing football season, Grissom on Hispanic farmers’ reaction to a federal settlement in a widespread discrimination case, Hu on what’s ahead for Democratic legislators after an electoral drubbing, Chang on the rise of hepatitis B among Asian-Americans and M. Smith on the cuts likely for Texas classrooms in the wake of a record budget shortfall: The best of our best from Dec. 6 to 10, 2010.
Posted inState Government
Interactive: Medicaid Caseload
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.
Posted in
Health care
Matching Medicaid
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.
Posted in
Health care
Drama Club
Maybe Dan Branch is right. Asked whether there’s a race for speaker, he called it more of a “Speaker Drama” and said Joe Straus (to whom he’s pledged) appears to have the thing locked up.
Posted in
Health care
TribBlog: Suehs: We Must Change — Not Abandon — Medicaid [Updated]
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.
Posted in
Health care
TribBlog: Report: Texas In No-Win Situation With Medicaid [Updated]
The effects of Texas dropping out of the federal Medicaid program would be sweeping and to some populations devastating. But that doesn’t mean the current system is workable for Texas, according to a long-awaited report released today by the state’s Health and Human Services Commission.
Posted in
Health care
Diabetic Shock
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.
