At a time when drugmakers are charging record prices for their products and jacking up prices on cancer drugs and other lifesaving treatments, 340B is one of the only consumer protection laws on the books. That’s why, in Texas, 141 hospitals participate in 340B and their patients benefit every day.
The board is on the right path in liberalizing Texans’ access to psychologists, whether masters- or doctorate-degreed, without artificial price supports. The Legislature could do more by certifying psychologists instead of licensing them. Otherwise more legal challenges will arise and Texas taxpayers will suffer more financial losses.
Every Texan — and every American — will benefit from the leadership that our president and the Texas Republicans in Congress have shown in this fight. Their willingness to work to fulfill these campaign promises is refreshing. I eagerly anticipate the results of their efforts: an even more successful economy and a brighter future for Texas and the Republican Party.
There’s no debate: CHIP saves lives. Consequently, when you jeopardize CHIP, you jeopardize kids’ lives. It’s time for Congress to reauthorize CHIP before Texas and other states start winding the program down and going down a path that may be impossible to reverse.
We have clear evidence that large portions of the state’s population are falling behind on a variety of measures of well-being. The data suggest inter-generational mobility — the likelihood that children will do better than their parents — is stalling in some parts of Texas.
While we still have much to do and learn as we recover from Hurricane Harvey, I can already say with confidence what one of the major recommendations of the Governor’s Commission to Rebuild Texas will be: We need the equivalent of a Texas Task Force 1 for disaster recovery.
As the 5th Circuit has said, a voter registration card is a “more secure document,” “not as easily obtained by another person,” “nondiscriminatory” and “free of charge.” Texas leaders should return to the drawing board to develop nondiscriminatory and evenhanded procedures.
More than 450,000 children in Texas will lose their health care in early 2018 if Congress fails to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program. These are the children whose working parents are making too much money for Medicaid and too little to afford exorbitant private health insurance premiums.
Our laws against discrimination apply to businesses that sell their goods to the public. Granting a business like Masterpiece Cakeshop a right to turn away customers would create a sweeping license to discriminate, with far-reaching and damaging consequences.
It is only natural for Republicans to try and ensure that the next speaker has the support of the majority of members from his or her own party. I also think the next speaker should demonstrate that he or she wants the support of the majority of the fellow members of his or her own party.
I call it the hotel next door, the place a vacationer reviewed on an STR site as “a great spot for a larger party of guys or girls looking to party and have some fun.” On this particular Saturday morning, that meant eight men lining up red Solo cups of beer and hollering as they tried to land a ping pong ball in them.
According to Shared Hope International, Texas scored a 93.5 percent for its child sex trafficking law. However, despite being one of only eight states to receive an “A,” Texas also continues to be one of 27 states to criminalize a child for prostitution offenses. Even though the age of consent is 17, a child can still be penalized for having sex for money in Texas.
Offering businesses incentives to relocate, expand, build a new facility or otherwise contribute to a local economy is increasingly standard practice and big business. In 2014 such incentives and tax breaks cost taxpayers over $80 billion — about 7 percent of local and state budgets. But the price of these incentives is even heavier than it initially looks.
The current attempt by extreme right wing members of the Texas House to have only the Republican Caucus select the next speaker of the Texas House is a violation of the Texas Constitution, House rules and possibly the Voting Rights Act and federal Constitution.
Texas was one of the first states to pass a law defining human trafficking in 2003. Since then, lawmakers have continued to increase funding for investigations, stings and prosecution of trafficking criminals. Sadly, victims who are rescued — even those who testify against their pimps or traffickers — are still treated like criminals.
We urge lawmakers not to use tragedies to lead Texas down the road of more government, but to lead us to a place of greater freedom. We demand Texas finally recognize constitutional carry.
The Paris Agreement was seen as historically successful because it allowed countries to define their contributions instead of prescribing them, a strategy that just wasn’t working. The 2017 Bonn COP23 conference was about creating mechanisms to measure and monitor the more customized commitments made at Paris in 2015, and the gathering became more than just a maintenance conference.
The federal 340B program, which was created to help patients, has seen rapid growth and expansion, providing an economic boon for hospitals — which are not passing along the billions of dollars in discounts to poor and underserved patients.
With candidates filing for the 2018 elections, and the Legislature apparently — finally — done for the year, I have updated my earlier ranking of members of the 2017 Texas House of Representatives and Senate. This includes votes from the regular session and from the summer special session, ranking lawmakers from most liberal to most conservative based on an analysis of 1,575 House and 1,831 Senate roll-call votes.
The debate in Congress over whether to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been put aside, at least for now. It is time for our federal legislators to shift their focus to other pressing health care topics, providing the opportunity for progress and to work together across the aisle.
