As Texas House and Senate leaders gird for a high-stakes fight over the state budget, a preliminary round of that showdown is taking shape over whether to partially undo cuts to a Medicaid program that reimburses therapists who serve low-income people with disabilities.
House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, is hoping to lessen the burden of the cuts the Legislature adopted in 2015 through the coming supplemental budget, which plugs holes in the current budget, for 2016 and 2017, and is approved before the final negotiations for the next two-year budget take place in late May.
But Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, has so far not given any indication that the upper chamber is interested in reversing the cuts, which lowered the rates at which therapy providers in Texas get reimbursed by Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor.
Source: Debate over Medicaid therapy cuts to be warm-up budget battle THE STATESMAN