Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Wait, Why in the Hell Did Facebook Donate Thousands of Dollars to Ted Cruz?

It's pretty frequent these days to experience Impotent Facebook Rage (IFR), in which the social media giant does something so profoundly irritating or angry-making that you immediately vow to get off the site altogether. And yet, you don't cancel your account cold turkey (or at least I don't), proba ... More >>

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.

Hey, Rick Perry, Listen. Is That a Fat Lady You Hear Singing?

Is it too soon and maybe even bad luck to say this out loud? Is it even possible that Governor Oops could be over? I'm knocking on wood, tossing salt over my shoulder, making the sign of the cross with my index fingers and looking for garlic in the kitchen as I speak, I promise. But yesterday cons ... More >>

As Supreme Court Debates Gay Marriage, Texas Politicians Explain How it Violates God's Law

The attention of the country, or at least that segment of it that's politically aware enough to pay attention, is focused squarely on the U.S. Supreme Court,which this week is debating a pair of potentially momentous cases. Hollingsworth v. Perry, which was argued today, could do away with Californi ... 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 >>

Spending the Holidays Surrounded by America-Hating Asshats

This is the first holiday season I can remember in which people stood around the Yule log talking about the country going off a cliff. No, wait. That's not the big part. The big part is that some of the people standing around the Yule log want the country try to go off a cliff. One night a couple d ... 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 >>

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 >>

Fluke Ain't No Floozy

Liberty Institute: Assault on Religious Liberty is at All-Time High (and That's Just Counting Christians)

You know the Liberty Institute as the group that has steered Plano's infamous Candy Cane Case through the courts. More recently, it's championed the cause of Angela Hildenbrand, the Texas high school student who wanted to pray during her valedictory speech. As part of its work, in 2004 the nonprofi ... More >>

Dallas State Rep. Stefani Carter, Now a Romney Surrogate, on Why Romney Should Get the Black Vote

Seems like it was only a month-and-a-half ago that Stefani Carter, the Republican state rep from North Dallas, was just another face in that Mitt Romney campaign piece about how, despite having just been booed during his speech to the NAACP, black people love him. Now, she's a full-fledged surrogate ... More >>

How to Speak Republican: Decoding the GOP

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 >>

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 >>

A Sampling of Texas' Overblown Reactions to Obamacare Ruling

At the end of the day yesterday, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation sent a dispatch from its president, Brook Rawlings, reacting to the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. "Make no mistake," Rawlings wrote. "This outcome is a net negative for every Texan -- and ... 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 >>

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 >>

Texas Insurance Companies Waste More Money Than Any State's -- But You May Get Some Back

If you are one of the 18 million or so Texans who have health insurance, you may find something unusual in your mailbox this summer: an envelope from your insurance company stuffed with cash or, more likely, a check. That's when the provision of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) will requ ... More >>

Anti-Abortion Prayer, Politics and Tornadoes from God Raise Spirits at Pastor Lou Engle's Rally

By 7:15 on Thursday night, women were already crying. By 7:30, a few were speaking in tongues, their arms raised heavenward, or kneeling in the chilly concrete aisles of the Dallas Convention Center's Area Hall C. Onstage, a muscular, clean-cut guy with sandy hair and a black V-neck T-shirt strummed ... More >>

Pastor Lou Engle is Coming to Dallas to Fight Abortion -- and He Needs Your Help, Ladies

A while back, for reasons I happily can't recall, I took the step of following the staunchly anti-gay pastor Lou Engle on Twitter. Engle is the founder of TheCall, a traveling circus of politically focused intolerance, and he makes his living (as much as $90,000 in a year, tax records show) by shari ... More >>

Victoria Jackson, Tea Party Princess

Victoria Jackson went from the big leagues of comedy to the rabid right of modern politics.

Paul Clement's To-Do List Just Got Longer As He Tries to Toss Texas's Redistricting Maps

​On Wednesday we got our first look at the new-look Texas maps drawn by the court, which is attempting to rectify the U.S. Department of Justice's concerns that the state Legislature is attempting to keep Hispanics from voting for Hispanic candidates, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth. To which Texa ... More >>

Is Mexico a Tea Party paradise?

Fox-y News' Own Numbers Show the Talibaptists Haven't Won Yet

​Today the Dallas school board meets to hear the possible "good news" from the superintendent -- that the district may only have to fire a quarter of its teachers instead of a third, depending on how badly the Rick Perry Banana Republicans and the TeeTee Party in Austin underfund public school ... More >>

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 >>