Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of Texans without health insurance has dropped dramatically, from 27 percent in 2013 to 20.8 percent this year, according to Gallup. This is good news, as it means that a couple of million more people in the state have greater…
The sliver of ground Ken Paxton and the state of Texas are fighting over is so small as to be absurd. That’s not a surprise, of course. So far this year, setting aside the big fights over things like saving the planet, he’s taken a brave stand against same-sex spouses…
A portion of the covertly filmed video that served as the basis for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate testimony against Planned Parenthood last week was released to the public Tuesday morning. It’s heavily edited, shot by a rabid anti-abortion group and impossible to date, but it’s chock full…
The quotation mark around the item title “Living Wage” Discussion on the Dallas City Council’s agenda are there for a reason. The rate being discussed Wednesday for city contracted workers, $10.25 an hour, is not a living wage unless you’re childless, and even then it’s close. But it is a…
The point, if there was one, was to say the words “baby parts” as many times as possible, as if they were a mantra. For four and a half hours Wednesday, the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services solicited testimony about fetal tissue donation from anti-abortion activists, Texas Attorney…
Essure is a birth control device designed to stay inside a woman’s body forever. “There is no good way, from the company, from the manufacturer, to take it out,” an Austin-based doctor told us in last week’s cover story about the device. Thousands of women have come forward online and…
Despite vaccinations’ being in literally everyone’s best interest, the Texas Legislature didn’t pass Dallas State Representative Jason Villalba’s bill this year that would’ve ended conscientious exemptions from vaccinations. As kids around the state get ready for the new school year, they will, just as they have in the past, only…
Wednesday, the Texas Senate will take the first real step in and investigation of Planned Parenthood ordered by Governor Greg Abbott. The governor, along with virtually every other Republican in the state, is in a tizzy over two videos recently released by the Center for Medical Progress. The videos, recorded…
Surely, you guys have wondered about the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in various Texas counties. You haven’t? Well RentApplication.com is here with a interactive map to tell us all about it anyway, titled “These are The Most Sexually Diseased Cities in the USA.” The website provides data on syphilis, gonorrhea…
Congressman Michael Burgess, representing Denton and Tarrant Counties, is a former gynecologist, but that won’t stop him from defending a medical device that’s been known to spread cancer in women. The device is a tool called the power morcellator, which doctors have used in surgery to grind up benign uterine…
In hindsight, Dr. Shawn Tassone says he and his colleagues were perhaps too eager to implant metal coils in their patients’ fallopian tubes. “We do kind of treat women’s health a little bit on the sly here in the United States,” says Tassone, who practices at Austin Area Obstetrics, Gynecology…
Tuesday morning, the dubiously named Center for Medical Progress released the second undercover video stemming from what it claims has been a three-year “undercover” investigation of Planned Parenthood. Like the first video, released a week ago, the new video shows a Planned Parenthood senior executive talking about, depending on your…
First, a few stipulations: Planned Parenthood offers abortions at many of its healthcare clinics. The tissue that results from those procedures is medically valuable. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and his predecessor, Rick Perry, have a deep-seated interest in making abortion illegal or as close to illegal as possible, as evidenced…
An emergency stay issued by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday will keep 10 Texas abortion clinics open at least until the court’s fall term. The clinics were set to close following the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in June to uphold a Texas law that requires any health…
However one might feel about the law, without doubt, the Affordable Care Act has helped Texans. As of March, the state’s percentage of uninsured residents, still the highest in the United States, has dipped almost 8 points to 16.9 percent. The drop can be almost entirely attributed to people buying…
When Dr. Hasan Hashmi and his son Suleman opened a hospital in Grand Prairie three years ago, they pitched it as a noble necessity for an underserved area. “Nationally, Grand Prairie was on the map as one of the largest cities in the country without an acute care hospital,” Suleman told…
And then there were eight. Tuesday afternoon, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed most of a lower court decision that kept most of the state’s remaining abortion providers open. The ruling makes the most onerous provision of Texas 2013 anti-abortion law, House Bill 2, enforceable. Every health clinic…
First, the good news that really isn’t good news at all, but whatever. As of late Monday afternoon’s 96-34 Texas House vote, both chambers of the Legislature have passed medical marijuana reform legalization. Texans who suffer from intractable epilepsy and are able to get their hands on low-THC cannabidiol oil…
Christin Bates, the Dallas Theological Seminary doctoral candidate/muscular dystrophy patient whose struggles with Texas’ health bureaucracy we chronicled here a week ago, won’t be stuck in a nursing home after all. Bates, 31, had spent the previous eight months futilely battling an alphabet soup of state health agencies in an…
When Texas lawmakers banned abortions after 20 weeks in 2013, the ban wasn’t totally devoid of compassion for women. There were a few exceptions to the 20-week ban; for instance, abortions “that are performed on unborn children with severe fetal abnormalities” would still be allowed. For Representative Matt Schaefer, a…
Whether we like or not, Obamacare has led to many more Texans being insured than were before the Affordable Care Act. According to a new survey from Rice University’s Baker Institute and the Episcopal Health Foundation, Texas had a 24.6 percent uninsured rate among residents 18-64 in September 2013, the…
A week after a sizable group of veterans descended on the state capitol to demand access to medical marijuana for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions, the Texas House’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday finally held a hearing on a cannabis-based treatment bill. Don’t expect the veterans…
