Key terms: Health and Human Services, cooperative federalism, poverty,
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A package of bipartisan bills to fix the state's broken Medicaid system got their first hearing Tuesday, setting the stage for a behind-the-scenes battle between influential doctor and patient groups that want change and health care companies that profited from the status quo.
Those bills came in response to an investigation by The Dallas Morning Newslast year that showed how companies that Texas pays to care for millions of sick, disabled and extremely poor people were skimping on treatments and medical equipment to boost profits under a program called "managed care."
A House effort, led by Rep. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, seeks major overhauls. Her bill would broadly expand protections for patients who are denied treatments and extend the state's power to monitor and penalize managed care companies that fail to meet certain standards.
The Senate is taking a more reserved approach, beefing up the way Texas handles patient complaints and cutting red tape for about 6,000 families with medically complex kids who were haphazardly forced into managed care more than two years ago.
Committees in both chambers heard hours of testimony on those bills, almost none of it in opposition.
But despite that public support, patient advocates worry the biggest changes, such as those included in Davis' bill, may already be doomed.
Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, is the new chairman of the House Human Services Committee, which may decide whether these bills live or die. He told the committee he expects tweaks but hopes to "get the best of these to the floor."
"We will pass, hopefully, some very good [managed care] bills this session," he said.
That's a stark contrast to the resistance patient advocates are hearing in private, says Hannah Mehta, who leads Protect TX Fragile Kids, a group of parents that fought back when lawmakers forced their children into managed care.
"We were told we should treat this as if this is the only managed care hearing we'll get," she said, expressing concern that Davis' bill may not make it out of Frank's committee.
Mehta says that's what she was told by Frank's chief of staff, Jim Johnson, before Tuesday's hearing.
Reached by phone, Johnson told The News, "I don't recall that that's what I said." He declined further comment.
