The latest Medicaid news from The Texas Tribune.
Despite some efforts to lessen the blow to pediatric health care providers, Texas’ proposed budget cuts will likely have a disproportionate effect on children’s hospitals, which treat the state’s youngest and poorest patients. Full Story
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The Senate unanimously approved Sen. Jane Nelson’s bill to find extensive cost savings in Texas’ Medicaid program, the primary health care provider for children, the disabled and the very poor. Full Story
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With less than five weeks left to go in the session, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sat down with the Tribune to talk about his future political plans, the status of the budget in the Senate and in the biennial parley between the Senate and the House, redistricting and the tug-of-war over the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
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Waiting for the Senate budget debate? Get comfortable. Plans to bring the Senate’s substitute for the House’s budget, HB 1, up for a vote on the floor on Thursday have for now been pushed back to Friday or later, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said. Full Story
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Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, trying to build enough support to bring the budget up for consideration this week, appealed in writing to state senators, supporting the plan and a provision that would allow the state to spend $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
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A $176.5 billion budget — 5.9 percent smaller than the current budget — won approval from the Senate Finance Committee right and will come to a full Senate vote after the Easter break. Full Story
A $176.5 billion budget for the 2012-13 biennium — 5.9 percent smaller than the current budget but almost $12 billion larger than the version passed earlier by the House — won approval from the Senate Finance Committee Thursday. Full Story
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Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, has dropped the news many have been waiting to hear: He wants to attach a contingency provision to the 2012-13 budget that would withdraw $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
House lawmakers have put their initial stamp of approval on a health care compact — a partnership with other states to ask the federal government for control over Medicaid and Medicare in Texas. Full Story
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State senators have unveiled a list of almost $5 billion in cash-flow tricks, property sales and fees that could be used to ease cuts in the state budget, but it's not enough to completely close the gap between what they have available and what they hope to spend. Full Story
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Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program could transition to a performance-based, rather than procedure-based, payment model, under bills the Senate unanimously passed today. Full Story
It doesn’t include a “sick tax.” But the Senate version of the state’s 2012-13 budget still takes direct aim at hospitals, in an effort to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and narrow the state’s revenue gap. Full Story
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The Texas Legislature is faced with a budget challenge that pits the Republican majority’s desire to cut government spending against a vulnerable target: the frail and the elderly covered by Medicaid and housed in nursing homes. Full Story
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A bill designed to find cost savings and efficiencies in Texas' costly Medicaid program — and, more controversially, expand managed care into the Rio Grande Valley — is moving to Senate budget writers for consideration. Full Story
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The Big Men on Campus in the school known as the Texas Legislature have the unenviable job of finding money that might alleviate the massive cuts outlined in House Bill 1, the general appropriations bill for the next biennium. Full Story
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Visualize the health care and Medicaid cuts in the House version of the proposed 2012-13 state budget, by county and per capita, with data compiled by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Full Story
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If congressional Republicans' proposed solution to cutting health care costs — giving states block grants to fund Medicaid — sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Full Story
Want to die comfortably? Move to Corpus Christi. A study of national hospice and hospitalization trends shows the percentage of Medicare patients dying in hospitals there, as opposed to at home or in hospice, is dropping fast. Full Story
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There’s a widely held belief around the Capitol that lawmakers balanced a troublesome budget in 2003 with a convenient underestimation of how many people would need to be served. So why not do that on purpose, and out in the open? Full Story
The first half of a legislative session is for building the relationships that get destroyed in the second half of the session. Full Story