Medicaid

Texas is Last in High School Graduation, First in Hazardous Waste, and Other Depressing Tidbits from a New Legislative Report

The Texas Legislative Study Group is a caucus of around 50 Democratic representatives from the Texas House, and they're real buzzkills. The LSG keeps a full-time staff of policy analysts around, who almost every year since 2003 have released a report called "Texas on the Brink," detailing all the mo ... More >>

Here Are All The Reasons Why Texas Teenagers Can't Seem to Stop Getting Pregnant

Congratulations, Texas! After a lot of hard work and many long nights, we're number one in the nation for repeat teen births. According to the Centers for Disease Control, which released a new report on April 2, in 2010, 22 percent of Texas teenagers aged 15-19 who gave birth were delivering their ... More >>

After Family Planning Cuts, More Than 17,000 Dallas County Women Lost Access to Care

In 2011, as we just cannot seem to stop mentioning, your state legislators cut $73 million from the state's family planning budget, instituted a tiered funding system designed to give family planning clinics any federal dollars dead last, and launched a weird war on the Medicaid Women's Health Progr ... More >>

In the Wake of Kaufman Slayings, Dallas County Prosecutors Encouraged to Ammo Up

The murder this weekend of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, two months after assistant DA Mark Hasse was gunned down in broad daylight, has Texas prosecutors on high alert. The Associated Press reports today that district attorneys throughout the state are taking extra ... More >>

Feds Bypass State, Give $13 Million for Family Planning Directly to Women's Health Coalition

Maybe you're not a Yiddish speaker, but you need a handy illustration of the concept of "chutzpah." In Spanish: cojones. Or in English, if you insist: king-sized brass balls. If you need a real-world demonstration of this cross-cultural concept, you have only to look at how your state-level bureaucr ... More >>

Abbott Goes After Watkins! It's The Demagogue vs. The Nose Thumber in a Cage Smackdown! Who Cares!? Not Me!

The big news in local politics today is supposed to be that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has publicly slammed Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins over how his office handed of a civil suit. Yeah. Sorry. Somehow this doesn't rise quite to the level of man-bites-dog for me. More like ... More >>

Texas Women's Health Program Still Says it Has Enough Docs, Even As It's Forced To Take Down Its Error-Riddled Provider Database

On January 1, Texas took over the Women's Health Program, booted Planned Parenthood out and dyed the website several shades of Pepto Bismol pink. Despite quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, Health and Human Services Commission officials continue to claim there'll be more than enough doctors for ... More >>

The American Lung Association Gives Texas an 'F', Calls it the "Tobacco Industry's Playground"

Smoking rates in the U.S. are plummeting. According to the CDC, there were three million fewer smokers in 2010 than in 2005. The factors contributing to this decline are are fairly obvious: improved educational efforts; cessation programs; higher cigarette taxes; tighter state and local anti-smoking ... More >>

Cantor and Co. Wimped Out at the Cliff's Edge, but There's More Scary Terrain Ahead

New Year's Day was great -- saw The Hobbit with son and girlfriend, came home to prime rib, what could be better? -- but I also spent a hell of a lot of time on the iPad trying to find out if I had fallen off a cliff yet. I'm not sure which was more death-defying -- the movie or real life. The real ... More >>

Texas Leads the League in Bad Nursing Homes, Partly Because It Won't Regulate the Offenders

In March 2011, after federal inspectors visited Keeneland Nursing and Rehab, a Weathorford nursing home, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a report detailing a laundry list of concerns. The report concluded that staff were medicating patients unnecessarily so they'd be easier to d ... More >>

Texas Anti-Abortion Group Wants to See a "Fetal Pain" Bill Passed This Session

Seven months ago, the influential anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life released its annual report, Defending Life 2012, featuring an enthusiastic blurb from Governor Rick Perry, who called the report "ammunition in a fight that is far from over." In return, AUL was full of praise f ... More >>

No Country for White, Old Men

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg has a new column out saying the presidential election was about our desire as a nation to become more European and by sad inference less American. Do you remember voting on that? I'm trying to think what the ballot language might have been. Proposition One (ink ... More >>

Planned Parenthood V. Texas, Round 1,867: Judge Rules PP Can Stay in the WHP, For Now

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it's true: the argument between the state of Texas and Planned Parenthood over the Women's Health Program looks like it's never, ever going to end. This case has dragged itself through state courts, federal courts, and back down to the state level again, ... More >>

Texas Will "Immediately" Defund Planned Parenthood After Court Refuses to Hear its Plea

That faint popping sound you heard last night was Governor Rick Perry uncorking a nice bottle of bubbly, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday refused a request by Planned Parenthood to rehear the case over its ban from the new Texas Women's Health Program (TWHP). Texas, it appears ... More >>

New England Journal of Medicine Says Texas' Family Planning Cuts Are A Public Health Disaster

It's been nearly a year since Texas legislators slashed the state's family planning funding, diverting $73 million to a variety of other programs. That was about two-thirds of the total family planning budget, and the conservative lawmakers who orchestrated the cuts were vocal about why they'd done ... More >>

Two Conventions: One for Old White People, One for Everyone Else

Look, I'm not even the world's biggest fan of political conventions, because they make me feel like I'm trapped in a cubicle with a car salesman. What's to believe about an event where they hire a consultant to do the balloon drop? But with these two conventions freshly behind us, I don't think it ... More >>

Dallas County Has a List of its 100 Drunkest Drunks, and It's Out to Get Them Treatment

If you're reading this, chances are you're probably not among Dallas County's "Top 100 Serial Inebriates," the recently compiled list of some of the area's most hopeless alcoholics. These aren't the people who overindulge on a Saturday night and have to sleep it off in the drunk tank. These are the ... More >>

Rick Perry: "Aliens" Still Not Eligible for Public Benefits In Texas

It's a pretty basic equation: When the Obama administration does something, Governor Rick Perry's against it. When at all possible, his administration will refuse to implement in Texas whatever policy change the feds have made. Expanding Medicaid? He's not going to do it here, no matter how many mil ... More >>

Judge: Texas Can Kick Planned Parenthood Out of the Women's Health Program

When we said yesterday Planned Parenthood could remain part of the Texas's Medicaid Women's Health Program "for now," we didn't know "now" would last less than 24 hours. A Fifth Circuit appeals judge has overturned yesterday's preliminary injunction blocking Texas from kicking Planned Parenthood o ... More >>

Planned Parenthood Wins Battle in War on Women as Judge Puts Off Exclusion from WHP

The scuffle between Texas and the feds over women's healthcare was supposed to get real tomorrow, when Planned Parenthood was scheduled to be barred from being a provider for the state's Medicaid Women's Health Program. But earlier today, Federal District Judge Lee Yeakel granted the non-profit its ... More >>

"It's Getting Rather Messy": The Best of the Rick Perry Facebook Bomb

Over at the Morning News' Trail Blazers Blog, Christy Hoppe pointed out late yesterday that Rick Perry's Facebook page has been "inundated by angry women" unhappy about the end of the Medicaid Women's Health Program. Perry's Facebook bomb is actually part of a larger effort to "sarcasm-flood" the ... More >>

Texas AG Greg Abbott Is Suing the Feds Over the Women's Health Program

We realize you're probably too busy side-stepping puddles of green puke to give much of a shit about what's going on in Austin. Nonetheless, we feel obliged to note that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit late yesterday against the federal government over its decision to withdraw fed ... More >>

Rick Perry Vows to Save the Medicaid Women's Health Program from the Evil Feds

Update, March 10: Federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced late Friday in Houston that federal funding to the WHP would be cut. She said the program will wind down over the next several months, and that the feds are considering funding Planned Parenthood directly. In r ... More >>

The Race for Texas' New Congressional District Is Going To Be Very Interesting. And Crowded.

Let's just call it: Everyone in town is running for Congress. Okay, not everyone, but the race for the newly-created, much-argued-over Congressional District 33 has gotten very, very crowded, especially on the Democrats' side. Last night we watched as former Dallas city council member -- and may ... More >>

Rick Perry and State Health Commissioner Insist Obama Hates Women, Loves Abortion

A few days ago, we told you that Texas's Medicaid Women's Health Program appears to be on death's door, which could leave some 130,000 low-income Texas women without vital medical care. We also mentioned that Gov. Rick Perry's administration appeared eager to blame the program's end on the feds broa ... More >>

The Bridge's CEO Explains Shelter's Role in Exposing Alleged $375 Mil Health Care Scam

​When the U.S. Attorney's Office unsealed the indictment yesterday alleging that Dr. Jacques Roy spearheaded the largest healthcare fraud in the nation's history out of his DeSoto office, they revealed that in 2010, he dispatched recruiters to The Bridge downtown. Their mission: pay homeless Medic ... More >>

Disabled Girl's Treatment Coverage Depends on Definition of "Hippotherapy"

Mark Samuels, a captain in the Navy, and Jennifer, his wife, never imagined their first time in court would be fighting for healthcare benefits for their daughter Kaitlyn. The 15-year-old was born with an uncommon brain condition similar to cerebral palsy. She cannot communicate verbally and functio ... More >>

Rick Perry's Balanced-Budget Illusion

​Now this is something I could really kick myself for. I can take being wrong. It's one thing to be accused of being too Pollyanna. (Not sure that has actually ever happened.) But the one thing I cannot forgive in myself is not being negative enough. That just should not been happening. That' ... More >>

Old White People Who Think They Can Just Check Out Should Think Again

So what is all this anger among the old white people really all about? Why are old white people wearing odd costumes and hating the president all the time? We old white people all know exactly what it is. But nobody will say it out loud. It never comes out in the stories, even though it's right the ... More >>

Which Local Lawmakers Made Texas Monthly's Annual Best and Worst List? Let's Take a Look.

Rep. Dan Branch​Pardon me as we take a brief detour from the parade route for just a moment, but Texas Monthly's just posted its latest list of the best and worst state legislators -- and Leo Berman made worst? No way. Anyway. The preview's here, sans further categories awaiting their print and on ... More >>

Senator Wendy Davis Draws a Line in the Dirt

At last, a Democrat is willing to stand up to Perrypublicans.

State GOP Legislators' Revenge Won't Be on Democrats, But on the Old, Poor and Sick

​People all over America should watch the special session of the Texas Legislature, just now beginning, if they want to see what Republicans are really up to. Among other things, they're out to kill Medicare and Medicaid. The regular session was stymied at the last minute when Democratic sta ... More >>

Mexican Macro-economics

Whose Dole Is It, Anyway?

Dallas Attorney Predicts Obama's Health Care Act Will Be Good for ... Local Real Estate

Homeland Security Affairs​Attorney Lew Lefko, a partner in Renaissance Tower-based Winstead PC, has worked in some aspect of the health-care profession for most of his career. Hence his appearance on GlobeSt.com this morning, where he tells Jennifer Duell Popovec that Texas stands to gain plenty f ... More >>

An Immigrant's Heart

To survive the ordeal of escaping Guatemala, Julia needed a big Heart. But not this big.

Food Bank CEO Says Hunger Report Reveals Chasm Between "The Two Dallases"

​Food-relief agencies across the country spent the better part of today poring over documents that tell them what they already know and have known for months, if not longer: There are more people going hungry in this country than there were in 2006, the last time Feeding America commissioned a Hun ... More >>

Indiana Has a Pain in the ACS

When Evacuees Become Residents, Part 3

Pain in the ACS?

MoveOn, Michael Burgess

Wheeler Dealers

Feds allege scam artists bilked Medicare for millions

Resistance is Futile

Despite new state and federal regulations, mentally ill Texans are still dying while being restrained by the very people they turn to for help

Home Unsweet Home

When a Garland nursing center started to slip, a group of concerned sons and daughters decided to do something about it. The management had other ideas.

Rising STAR

Privatizing health care for the poor might work--if the state will pay for it

Twice Bitten

Ants claimed two victims at a troubled Flower Mound nursing home

Unsettled

War refugees in Dallas find themselves in the crossfire of a another battle -- with the people in charge of welcoming them to America

Congressional hopeful Jerry Frankel has ideas, brains, and GUTS.

Dick Armey will eat his lunch.

The new Civil War

Tax breaks for corporations are about to tear us in half

Unkindest cuts