Talking point No. 1 for an elected official facing an ethics investigation in Texas: Blame the politicization of the Public Integrity Unit, which is funded by the Legislature but operates out of the district attorney’s office in heavily Democratic Travis County.
Medicaid
Posted in
Health care
TribBlog: Medicaid Reimbursement Change Halted
The politically powerful hospital was poised to lose millions in Medicaid reimbursements under a hospital funding shuffle — until it reached out to lawmakers with its concerns.
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Demographics
More Texans are Poor, Uninsured
Census Data released Thursday shows a troubling rise in the number of impoverished Americans and Texans — along with a shift in the number of Texans who have insurance. Mose Buchele of KUT News reports.
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Demographics
The Huddled Masses
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana exiles have fundamentally changed Houston, and vice-versa. The uneasy arrangement was a shotgun marriage: Many evacuees had no choice in whether or where they went, and Houstonians had no choice, for humanity’s sake, but to take them in.
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Criminal Justice
Pat Lykos: The TT Interview
The first female district attorney of Harris County on the massive scope of her job, softening her office’s tough-on-crime reputation, the link between mental health care and criminal justice, why she set up a Post-Conviction Review Section and what she’s learned from innocence cases so far.
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Health care
A Turf War Over Mental Health
The intent of the law seemed clear: The state’s 39 MHMRs would, wherever possible, stop offering direct medical services and start managing networks of private providers. But a bureaucratic scrum has delayed the privatization of care.
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Demographics
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Galbraith on grass, federal money and efforts to prevent another dust bowl, Ergenbright on school suspensions and who gets punished; Aguilar’s interview with Alan Bersin, whose job is to keep the U.S./Mexico border secure, M. Smith on why it would be harder than you think to ditch the 14th Amendment, Adler and me on whether controversy is politically contagious, Ramshaw on the flap over funding for the state’s institutions for the disabled (it’s not about the money), my meditation on the state’s fiscal woes (including a $1.3 billion deficit in the current budget), Philpott on proposed cuts to the state’s food stamp program, Grissom on the push by Hidalgo County officials for a special election that might not be legal; Hamilton on the seven Texas universities that are making a play for Tier One status and Stiles on the mid-year cash-on-hand numbers reported by campaigns and political action committees: The best of our best from August 16 to 23, 2010.
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Demographics
Obstacles in the Path
At a House hearing Wednesday, lawmakers learned that undocumented immigrants have almost no way to earn permanent residency status in the U.S. through employment and that a much-touted system to verify that employees can legally work here is flawed.
Posted in
Health care
Good Money After Bad?
In the wake of high-profile incidents of abuse, state health officials want to boost payments to Texas’ institutions for the disabled by $25,000 per patient per year. But the proposed Medicaid rate change has drawn the ire of Texas’ disability community, which wants to see the facilities shuttered rather than propped up.
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Health care
TribBlog: Doctors-in-Residence
Lawmakers must fund more in-state medical residency slots if Texas wants to ward off a looming physician shortage, the presidents of the six University of Texas medical centers told the UT System Board of Regents on Wednesday.
