We’re almost halfway through the 80th Lege, and I agree with Burka that it’s been a bizarre session. We’ve had the Speaker’s race, the four-fifths rule non-suspension, the shenanigans to bypass the constitutional spending limit, the TYC and Jessica’s Law and the HPV fight, and we still haven’t really gotten into the grind, where bills are debated or killed on a daily basis. There’s also been a sort of eerie quiet in between some of these battles, which just adds an extra element of surrealism. Some day we’re going to look back on this and wonder what the hell happened.
And the worst part is that the upcoming ruling on Medicaid coverage that’s sure to blow a hole in the budget, and in a worst case scenario may lead to 2003-style cuts in social services so that the cursed property tax reductions can still be paid for. Read Burka’s analysis and get ready to crawl under your desk. Once again, it’s gonna get ugly.
The burst on news about the Frew (Medicaid) case is a scare tactic. We spend only $5 billion on children’s Medicaid now. No way that any court order will double that amount. It’s just an excuse to take the eventual cost of the settlement out of other HHS spending, instead of funding it by reducing the property tax cuts.
P.S. If the state had actually tried to fix its Medicaid program, instead of fighting this case to the US Supreme Court (twice!), they wouldn’t be in this fix.