Medicaid

Dallas Interfaith Group to State Lawmakers: Expand Medicaid Now

Dallas Area Interfaith held a news conference this morning at Temple Emanu-El, where more than a dozen faith leaders from the Dallas area gathered to support Medicaid expansion. Since Friday, 60 clergy members from Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations have signed a letter calling on state l ... More >>

How Medicare Became a Thieves' Bazaar

In Dallas and across the country, hospitals, doctors and dealers have made Medicare the nation’s sweetest crime. The feds are now trying to shutter the door.

Vouchers Suffered a Blow in the Texas House, but "Vouchers" Definitely Are Still in Play

Yesterday the State House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1, a new state budget of $193.8 billion, by a lop-sided vote of 135-12. One of the more surprising parts of the bill's passage is the approval of an anti-private school voucher amendment, passed by a vote of 103-43. The amendment, spo ... More >>

The Plastic Bag Debate in Texas Has Gone Off the Rails

Austin's plastic bag ban has been in effect for three weeks now, and the city has so far managed to avoid economic Armageddon. Austinites, it seems, are still able to buy groceries, go shopping, and order restaurant takeout. They just have to carry their purchases in reusable bags. It's an admitted ... More >>

Pill-Pushing Founder of a South Dallas Clinic Pleaded Guilty to Health-care Fraud Yesterday

In 2003, Dr. Daniel Leong opened the South Dallas Community Medical Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a few blocks from Fair Park. It was something of a second chance for Leong, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1989 after he was caught writing prescriptions to supply his wife with near ... More >>

New Report Details the Incredible Stupidity of Texas' Rejection of Medicaid Expansion

In July, Governor Rick Perry sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explaining why the state of Texas would not be taking part in the federal government's plans to expand Medicaid. Such an expansion would "enlarge a broken system that is already financially unsustain ... More >>

Business Lobbyists Offer Help with Fixing Deficit. Kiss Your Asses Goodbye, Old and Sick People

This country is being hoodooed by the oldest magic show trick in the book -- misdirection. The fictional crisis of entitlement spending is just a new version of the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, the latest cheap trick by the super-rich to turn our attention away from the truth. For a glimpse of ... More >>

Texas Finally Realizes Where Babies Come From, May Restore Family Planning Money

Last legislative session, your lawmakers in the Texas Legislature cut $73.6 million from the state's family planning budget, a move which, impressively, has somehow resulted in far fewer patients being served, for more money per patient. Don't ask us how they managed that one. As Emily Ramshaw writ ... More >>

This Is What Texas Stands to Spend, and Gain, with Obamacare

Governor Rick Perry vows that the Medicaid expansion prescribed under Obamacare won't come to Texas, the state with the highest rate of uninsured in the country. He fears it would render Lone Star State health care a mere "appendage" of the federal government. The feds, of course, would pick up nea ... More >>

"Abortion Affiliates" Banned From the New Texas Women's Health Program, But Doctors Allowed To Talk About Abortion

The new Texas Women's Health Program is really going to be special. And by "special," we mean terrible. But as the Texas Tribune reports , state officials have made one tiny concession in response to complaints from women's advocacy and medical groups: Doctors will now be allowed to discuss the exis ... More >>

Richard Malouf, the Dallas Dentist Accused of Fraud, Sues WFAA and Owen Wilson's Mom

Richard Malouf has had an exciting year or so, what with being investigated by the state, the feds and WFAA for what is alleged to be a massive amount of Medicaid fraud. Malouf and wife Leanne's rather lavish personal lifestyle has also come under scrutiny: the mansion, the jets, the fancy cars, th ... More >>

More Than 300,000 People in Dallas County Would Get Health Insurance Under Obamacare, But Not In Rick Perry's Texas

Some six million Texans are one health emergency away from financial ruin, and the state of affairs in Dallas County isn't any better. Nearly 30 percent of its residents are uninsured. That's 672,681 of our neighbors whom the health insurance markets have excluded, according to the latest U.S. Cen ... More >>

Texas Plans to Use Medicaid Expansion it Rejected to Pay For Women's Health Program

In early June, Governor Rick Perry was quick to announce that no state of his would be taking any of that tyrannical federal money to expand Medicaid coverage. Yet court documents filed by outgoing Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs claim that the state's new, Planned Parenthood-free W ... More >>

Texas Has the Worst Electricty Grid in the Nation

You might have already figured this out given the perennial threat of rolling blackouts and grid operator ERCOT's own admission that, come 2013, there won't be sufficient wattage to cover peak demand, but the state's electrical grid isn't the best. In fact, as the Texas Tribune reports today, it's t ... More >>

Richard Malouf, the Dentist Accused of Millions in Medicaid Fraud, is Building a Private Water Park

For the past year, WFAA has been digging into Richard Malouf and All Smiles Dental and Orthodontics, the chain of pediatric clinics he owns (used to own, actually) with his wife. What the station found was what appeared to be a massive case of Medicaid fraud in which he bilked the state for unnecess ... More >>

Now Texas Wants its Women's Health Program to Ban Doctors from Talking about Abortion

As Governor Rick Perry vows not to take any of that filthy federal money to expand Medicaid in Texas, state lawmakers may also have to find another $39 million next year to keep the Medicaid Women's Health Program alive. These days, the WHP has been going through some prolonged death throes. Texa ... More >>

Perry Says NO-bamacare for Texas

This morning, in a move about as surprising as the sun rising, Governor Rick Perry came out with guns blazing against the Affordable Health Care Act, recently approved (mostly) by the U.S. Supreme Court. The act's expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor will not be implemented in Perry's state, de ... More >>

Texas Has Worst Health Care in Nation, Report Says. But What Does the Government Know?

Texas Republicans have been complaining loudly since the Supreme Court decided that the Affordable Care Act passed constitutional muster. The law is a huge overreach by the federal government, it's a "stomach-punch" to the economy, Obama is a socialist, etc. etc. There's even quite serious talk abou ... More >>

GOP Arguments Against Obamacare Leave Me Empty-Handed

So I'm doing a this-hand versus that-hand thing in my head on Obamacare. Everybody says the Republicans are going to make this year's presidential election a referendum on the Affordable Care Act. I just want to be ready. On the one hand, Affordable Care will encourage tons of poor people and young ... More >>

Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law

Update at 9:40 a.m.: Check out the full decision below. Original post: We were planning to try to localize the Supreme Court's decision this morning on the Affordable Care Act, do some sort of informed, level-headed analysis like the DMN's Michael Lindenberger prepared last night. But that would re ... More >>

Dallas Doctor Tops State in Taxpayer-Funded Weight-Loss Surgeries

Over the weekend, the Texas Tribune published one of those eye-opening, number-crunching reports the website has made its niche. This one is about weight-loss surgery, specifically weight-loss surgery that is paid for by taxpayers. This is a relatively new phenomenon, the Tribune notes. Medicare on ... More >>

Federally Mandated Improvements at Parkland Will Top $31 Mil

Parkland Memorial Hospital was almost shut down last year after federal inspectors threatened to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicare and Medicaid funding after finding "deficiencies that represent an immediate and serious threat to patient health and safety." Because of its size and ... More >>

Texas Has More Uninsured Veterans Than Any Other State. So That's Lovely.

The difficulties faced by military veterans returning home, from elevated divorce and suicide rates to a harsh job market, have been well documented. Turns out, many of them also don't have health coverage. According to a study released last week by the Urban Institute, 10 percent of veterans lac ... More >>

The Defunding of Women's Health Care in Texas May Force Rural Clinics to Close

We keep hammering away at this same general point, but really: It's been a terrible year for family planning providers in Texas. First the Legislature moved $73.6 million out of the state family-planning budget for the next two years . At the same time, they changed to a tiered funding structure tha ... More >>

Federal Medicaid Agency Lays Out Just How The Women's Health Program Will End

What prompted Governor Rick Perry's frenzied bout of outraged tweeting about the Women's Health Program yesterday? As much as we'd like to speculate that it was a bad batch of PCP (and will continue to do so privately, purely for our own amusement, not because it's at all true), it was actually one ... More >>

Planned Parenthood Director Turned Pro-Life Superstar Is Suing PP For Alleged Medicaid Fraud

As long as we're on the general theme of "unpleasant events that are somehow related to the Medicaid Women's Health Program," let's throw this one in there too: Abby Johnson, who was until a couple of years ago the director of a clinic that was part of Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast, is now su ... More >>

From Texas or Russia, Medicare Scamsters Are All the Same -- Greedy

Here we are, with the biggest Medicare fraud in history going -- so we are told -- and The New York Times devotes its front page today to a story about Medicare fraud carried out by organized Russian gangs in ... oh, guess where! ... New York City! What can we do down here in Dallas to get respect? ... More >>

Feds Allege Local Doctor Behind "Largest Healthcare Fraud Case" in U.S. History

​We received a release this morning from the U.S. Attorney's Office inviting us to a noon-thirty press conference at the Earle Cabell, at which time U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and a host of other federal officials would address "a major health care fraud enfor ... More >>

Medicaid Women's Health Program Is One Step Closer To Death

The Medicaid Women's Health Program provides some 130,000 Texas women with vital medical care: family planning, birth control, cancer screenings and annual exams. And for that, of course, it must die. That, at least, has long been the case as far as Republican lawmakers are concerned. And after last ... More >>

A Successful Health Program May End Thanks to Texas's Quest to Kill Planned Parenthood

ViaYou, sir, must not be a Texas legislator.​It's been a good 14 minutes since the state twisted its rusty knife into the already-wounded gut of women's healthcare. But fear not: There's a huge, ugly storm brewing between the state and federal governments over the Medicaid Women's Health Progr ... More >>

As Parkland Hospital Selects Interim CEO, It Also Decides What to Do With Ron Anderson

​The man who see at right is Thomas C. Royer, M.D., who, for 12 years, was the man in charge of CHRISTUS Health, described on its website as "a Catholic health ministry." Not long ago he received the American Hospital Association's Distinguished Service Award, one among myriad high honors on a ré ... More >>

The End of Family Planning in Texas

They say they defunded Planned Parenthood. But lawmakers' attack on family planning will cost Texas money, reduce access to healthcare and result in even more abortions.

Doc's Whistleblowing Results in Parkland, UT Southwestern Paying $1.4 Million to Feds

Gentilello in a 2005 UT Southwestern photo​Amidst all the other things going on with Parkland at the moment, there remains one other Very Big Thing you've probably forgotten all about: Dr. Larry Gentilello's allegations that trauma residents at the county hospital were treating patients and perfo ... More >>

It's Getting Expensive As City, Whistleblowing Auditor Wrangle Over Retaliation Claims

​Of the myriad lawsuits involving the city, Doug Moore v. City of Dallas et al is among the most expensive -- and getting a little more pricey all the time. This case, for those not keeping score at home, has already cost the city $2.5 million, paid to the state and the feds in June over allegatio ... More >>

My New Hero, Fort Worth's Wendy Davis, Who Sure as Hell Ain't Scared Of Rick Perry

​Thank the Lord every once in a while the American political system churns out a Wendy Davis, the 48-year-old Senate freshman from Fort Worth who filibustered Rick Perry's legislative session to a soggy grave in the wee small hours of Monday night. The Perrypublican fury over Davis's act isn't me ... More >>

Why Should You Pay for Park Cities Dowagers' Trinity Baubles?

​Check me on this. In an atmosphere of federal, state, county and city funding crises, where we may even see the defunding of federal health care reform, the gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, an absolute decimation of support for public schools and impoverished children, drastic ... More >>

How Bad Will Things Have to Get Before We Make Them Better?

Does Texas Need a Debacle?

​Two experiences over the weekend have given me hope. One was watching a documentary on the catastrophic 1911 Triangle Waist Factory Fire in New York, and the other was a seminar I attended on the state budget crisis. Debacles can be good for us. The documentary made an argument that the sh ... More >>

ACS to Let Georgians Know Their Rights After Betraying Their Trust

Darwin's ACS in a Sling. Or Not.

Re: Dallas is Anti-Pro Bono

Tax Dollars at Work

Hey, armed robbers need bullets, too!

Hoosegow HMO

A contained experiment in Medicaid

Quick Fix

After years of financial neglect, the state is hoping a shot of privatization will cure Dallas County's addicted and mentally ill population

Slicing the pie

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison switches to the side of the angels in Texas' tobacco battle

A pox on 1995!

Next year will be better

Rich man's Robin Hood

GOP budget is greatest-ever transfer of wealth from the Have-Nots to the Haves

Falling into The Gap

The chasm separating the haves and have-nots is getting wider

Getting real

Clinton's plans for fixing affirmative action are sensible and moderate

Dumb and dumber

The Nation of Nitwits rolls along with the Republican Revolution