The latest Medicaid news from The Texas Tribune.
State budget writers will propose eliminating agencies, cutting others to a quarter of their current size and mandating furloughs for state employees to balance the budget without raising taxes or using the state's Rainy Day Fund, Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts told a hometown crowd. Full Story
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You know the home inspector told you to fix that leak but hey it wasn't a flood or a lot of water and everything seemed okay and you let it go and now the insurance company is slow-paying and the contractor is shaking his head and your wallet and this is really a painful way to run a race for speaker... Joe Straus hasn't had a really good news day since the Republicans won 99 seats on Election Night and he announced the next day that more than four out of five House members wanted him back. Full Story
Hu on the Perry-Bush rift, Ramshaw on the adult diaper wars, Ramsey's interview with conservative budget-slasher Arlene Wohlgemuth, Galbraith on the legislature's water agenda (maybe), M. Smith on Don McLeroy's last stand (maybe), Philpott on the end of earmarks (maybe), Hamilton on the merger of the Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Education Agency (maybe), Aguilar on Mexicans seeking refuge from drug violence, Grissom on inadequate health care in county jails and my conversation with Houston Mayor Annise Parker: The best of our best from November 15 to 19, 2010. Full Story
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Call it a bad case of adult diaper drama: Incontinence product vendors are facing off against the state comptroller’s office over plans to competitively bid underpads, catheters and other supplies for Texas Medicaid patients. Full Story
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The former budget-slashing Texas House member and current executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation on how she reads the mood out there, what reductions in state spending should be on the table, whether cost-shifting to local school districts is a plausible option, why lawmakers should forget about new sources of revenue, the trouble with Medicaid and what members of the Republican near-supermajority in the Legislature must do to keep the confidence of voters — and get re-elected. Full Story
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Galbraith on energy conservation and basketball, Ramshaw (and Serafini of Kaiser News) on what would happen if states abandoned Medicaid, Hallman on cities and counties lobbying the feds (and a Stiles data app visualizing what they're spending), Aguilar on legislative attempts to stop human trafficking, Aaronson on cuts in Senate office spending, Philpott on the latest run at a Senate rule that empowers political minorities, yours truly on how the GOP landslide will change the way things work at the Capitol, Hu catches the first day of bill filing and finds immigration at the top of the agenda and Hamilton on a wobbly partnership between two Texas universities: The best of our best from November 8 to 12, 2010. Full Story
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A week after newly emboldened Republicans in the Texas Legislature floated a radical cost-saving proposal — withdrawing from the federal Medicaid program — health care experts, economists and think tanks are trying to determine just how possible it would be. The answer? It’s complicated. But it’s not stopping nearly a dozen other states, frantic over budget shortfalls and anticipating new costs from federal health care reform, from exploring something that was, until recently, unthinkable. Full Story
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Now hitting airwaves on whether Texas should drop out of the federal Medicaid program: Gov. Rick Perry and Dallas' Parkland Hospital CEO Ron Anderson. Full Story
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Some Republican lawmakers are proposing an unprecedented solution to the state’s massive budget shortfall: opting out of the federal Medicaid program. But experts say the rhetoric may be more of a middle finger to Washington than sound public policy. Full Story
Twice as many people showed up for the first three days of early voting in the state's top 15 counties as came out four years ago, according to the Texas Secretary of State. Through the end of the day Wednesday (there's a lag in the reporting and those were the latest numbers as we published), 435,007 people had voted, compared with 219,436 four years ago. As a percentage of registered voters, that's 5.22 percent this year as opposed to 2.7 percent four years ago. Early voting continues for another week. During the 2006 gubernatorial election, 13.2 percent of the registered voters in those top 15 counties voted early. Full Story
Hu on freshman House Democrats trying to win re-election in a Republican year, Grissom on Republicans bolstered by those same political trends, Aguilar on slow reforms in immigrant detention programs, Chang on the trouble with synthetic marijuana, Ramshaw on how proposed cuts in state Medicaid services could affect 13,000 Texans, yours truly on how political polls have as much to do with who's counted as with what they say, Galbraith on why Texas is building coal plants in spite of tightening federal air pollution standards, Hamilton on community colleges accusing the University of Texas of siphoning money from their financial wells, M. Smith on the court of inquiry proposed for a death penalty case and how it would work, and E. Smith interviews U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess about federal health care: The best of our best from Oct. 11 to 15, 2010. Full Story
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Advocates say the Department of Aging and Disability Services’ baseline budget request eliminates financing for more than 13,000 people — the majority waiting to receive Medicaid waiver services. Agency officials will only say that an “unknown number” of people already receiving the services could lose them. It's unclear if lawmakers can make these cuts without risking losing federal funding; federal health care reform requires states to maintain coverage at the same level it was when the Affordable Care Act became law in March. Full Story
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The new president of the Arc of Texas on why the disability community’s rallying cry to close state-supported living centers has become trite and ineffective, why the movement's messaging should be upgraded (employing everything from the iPad to the Bible) and why businesses and faith-based groups should be mobilized to fill the gaping holes in government services. Full Story
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Double-billing taxpayers for travel expenses, driving a luxury car owned by a state transportation contractor and repeatedly failing to pay taxes won’t put a lawmaker in good standing with the ethics police, as state Reps. Charles “Doc” Anderson, R-Waco; Joe Driver, R-Garland; and Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, are finding. The three hope the headlines dogging their re-election bids won’t follow them to the polls, while their Democratic opponents are reveling in their misery at every campaign stop. Yet whether a scandal forces an incumbent from office depends on the scenario. Full Story
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Relief for young adults without health benefits may be on its way today, as several key provisions of federal health care reform take effect. The law mandates that insurers allow parents to enroll dependents up to age 26 regardless of their student status. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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. Full Story
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