Obesity a Major Problem in Texas
from The Abilene Reporter News, July 30, 2009
Jeffrey Levin, chair of the Texas Medical Association's Council on Public Health, said that he wasn't surprised by the sheer number of Texans that are obese and the additional health costs associated with being so. "I think it's been fairly clear in Texas and across the United States that we have this changing pattern of becoming increasingly overweight and obese," he said. More

Texas Congressman Wants Government Accounting Office to Investigate High Health Care Costs in McAllen
from The Rio Grande Guardian, July 30, 2009
Prompted by a recent article in The New Yorker, a Texas congressman wants the Government Accountability Office to look into the high cost of health care in McAllen. In a letter to leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Denton, said an independent analysis needs to be conducted to verify the findings of Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical School professor, who wrote the now famous "The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care" article for The New Yorker. More

Mismanaged Care
from Texas Monthly Online Blog, August 2009
This summer's national debate on health care reform has brought into focus the manifold factors that drive medical costs ever upward. Texas has not escaped scrutiny. The June 1 issue of the New Yorker featured a story headlined "The Cost Conundrum" by Atul Gawande, who uncovered the astonishing fact that the costs of treating Medicare patients in McAllen are twice the national average. Gawande, a surgeon and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, concluded from an analysis of Medicare data that "the primary cause of McAllen's extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine." More

Opinion: Playing Politics With Health Care
from Time Magazine, Aug. 4, 2009
In the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat held up Texas as "model citizen" in this difficult economy. And while I'll take a back seat to no one in my regard for my home state, I have to take issue with Douthat's suggestion that President Obama should be looking to Texas as he tries to figure out a way to fix health care. As I've written before, the state offers some of the best examples of what is wrong with health care in America; it has the highest rate of uninsured in the country, and an insurance market that can charitably be described as a mess. More

Perry Sends Health Care Request to D.C.
from The Office of Governor Rick Perry via KLBJ News Radio, July 30, 2009
Gov. Rick Perry, in a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, emphasized the state's 10th Amendment authority to set effective health care policies for Texans. The governor reiterated his request for a federal Medicaid waiver that would allow Texas to pursue state-based solutions to provide more uninsured low-income Texans with insurance, reduce expensive emergency room visits for basic care and make it easier to buy into employer-sponsored insurance. More

TV: Dogget Fires Back After Chaotic Crowd Confrontation
from KVUE-TV, Aug. 3, 2009
Longtime Central Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, is getting a taste of viral video stardom after a crowd of healthcare reform protesters confronted him at a town hall event over the weekend. Doggett's Saturday morning town hall in South Austin was meant to be a low-key question-and-answer period with constituents. But witnesses say tension built up quickly. More

Opinion: What's Causing the Health Care Impasse
from The Dallas Morning News, Aug. 4, 2009
The failure of the House and Senate to meet President Barack Obama's demand for action on a health care bill before their August vacations has prompted a predictable array of fault-finding and premature conclusions. But the fact that several generations of lawmakers have grappled with the question of guaranteeing universal health care coverage since the 1930s underscores how difficult this fight was always going to be, despite the most favorable political environment in a generation. More

More Than 50 Percent of Poor Residents in Some Counties Uninsured
from HealthLeaders Media, Aug. 5, 2009
As if anyone needs evidence the healthcare safety net isn't working, new state and county data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2006 might be convincing. Roughly one in four children and adults under age 65 in all income brackets had no health insurance of any kind in Texas, New York, Louisiana, and Florida. And roughly one in five had no coverage in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, and Oregon. More

Discount Immunizations Offered to Students
from KERA, Aug. 4, 2009
Dallas county is offering low cost vaccinations to students this Saturday, at the health and human services building on Stemmons Freeway. The state requires these immunizations. More

South Texas Event Provides Health Care
from The Associated Press via The Dallas Morning News, Aug. 5, 2009
Thousands of South Texans are expected to receive free medical and dental services this week during Operation Lone Star. Currently in its eleventh year, Operation Lone Star is a free medical treatment program offered by the military along with state and county officials. More

Advocate, MD Sold for $45.6 Million
from The Austin American-Statesman, July 31, 2009
A Florida company has agreed to buy Advocate, MD Financial Group Inc., an Austin-based provider of medical professional liability insurance. Advocate, MD is the fourth-largest provider of medical malpractice insurance in Texas and also provides coverage in Mississippi. More

Aetna Adds WhiteGlove House Call Health
from The Dallas Business Journal, Aug. 4, 2009
Aetna members in Dallas-Fort Worth will no longer need to leave their homes or offices to be seen by a doctor. The company has added WhiteGlove House Call Health, Inc. to its provider network in Dallas-Fort Worth. The Austin-based company makes house calls to patients for minor ailments, such as colds, flus, infections and skin rashes. The agreement gives Aetna's members in Collin, Dallas, Denton, Rockwall and Tarrant counties a chance to be treated at home or work, rather than having to go to a doctor's office or health care center. More

University Medical Center at Brackenridge to Get Federal Money for Mammography
from The Austin Business Journal, July 31, 2009
University Medical Center at Brackenridge is in line for $150,000 in federal funds that will go toward acquiring cancer screening equipment. The money has been secured for mammography equipment at University Medical Center in the 2010 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex. More