In the wake of Medicaid budget cuts, state lawmakers are looking for ways to make sure low-income Texans are covered.
The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Texas lawmakers have introduced a bill that would “overhaul Medicaid†by reducing the program’s cost while covering more people.
Jane Nelson, state senator and chief sponsor of the bill, told the paper that the measure would appropriate funds to pay for preventive care and to discourage Medicaid recipients from going to hospital emergency rooms unnecessarily. The bill also would allow the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to ask the feds if uncompensated care payments could be used to create a funding pool.
Governor Rick Perry recently told FOX News’s Chris Matthews that to fund insurance for the uninsured, he proposed “selling our state lottery, taking part of those proceeds and creating an insurance trust fund” to cover 500,000 low-income Texans.
