Texas Tribune reporter Thanh Tan is writing a series of articles on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Texas is one of the states that filed suit against the federal government challenging the law, particularly the individual mandate, as unconstitutional. The Texas Tribune published a story (which includes a video) on how the law affects physicians. An excerpt:
While a ruling on the constitutionality of the new health care reforms is not expected until late June, Texas patients appear to already be experiencing longer wait times to visit their physicians.
A UT Health Science Center study out Tuesday suggests Houston’s safety net would have to grow 17 percent a year just to handle the expected increased need for doctors. The Texas Tribune has gathered data on Medicaid patients. In the statewide map, the darker the county, the more Medicaid patients.
In Harris County — a federally declared shortage zone — the number of Medicaid doctors trails the state average. If the Supreme Court upholds the health care law, hundreds of thousands of Texans would become eligible for Medicaid at the very time Texas doctors say they’re considering closing their doors to some new patients. See the Tribune’s companion interactive looking at the slow growth of the state’s primary-care workforce.
