When it comes to health care, as with so many aspects of life, money talks. And the Texas Legislature this year showed medicine’s advocates that it’s allocating the state’s money with Texas’ health needs in mind.
The legislature listened to many of medicine’s most pressing asks on the only thing lawmakers legally must do each session: pass a two-year budget.
(Gov. Greg Abbott hasn’t signed the final budget bill, Senate Bill 1, yet. As with everything in the budget, medicine’s wins are contingent upon the governor not using line-item vetoes on them.)
In perhaps the House of Medicine’s most important funding win this year, the final budget fully funds the state’s graduate medical education (GME) program at $199.1 million, allowing preservation of the target ratio of 1.1 first-year residency slots for every medical school graduate in order to keep Texas medical school students in Texas.
The legislature also:
- Gave a slight bump to women’s health funding over the next two years, allocating a total of $352.6 million;
- Maintained funding for early childhood intervention services ($339 million), allowing physicians to address developmental delays and disabilities;
- Increased funding for the Texas Mental Health Care Consortium by nearly $20 million, to $119 million overall, which will allow the state to continue funding the Child Psychiatric Access Network; and
- Made increased physician payments in pediatric Medicaid a possibility, requiring the state Medicaid program to conduct a study on the impact of increasing payments for treating children up to age 3. If doing so is cost-effective, that could lead to a pilot program in March 2023.
Be sure to read Texas Medicine Today for legislative updates on the budget and other TMA-priority bills.
Last Updated On
June 10, 2021
Originally Published On
June 09, 2021