First, a few stipulations: Planned Parenthood offers abortions at many of its healthcare clinics. The tissue that results from those procedures is medically valuable. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and his predecessor, Rick Perry, have a deep-seated interest in making abortion illegal or as close to illegal as possible, as evidenced…
An emergency stay issued by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday will keep 10 Texas abortion clinics open at least until the court’s fall term. The clinics were set to close following the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in June to uphold a Texas law that requires any health…
However one might feel about the law, without doubt, the Affordable Care Act has helped Texans. As of March, the state’s percentage of uninsured residents, still the highest in the United States, has dipped almost 8 points to 16.9 percent. The drop can be almost entirely attributed to people buying…
When Dr. Hasan Hashmi and his son Suleman opened a hospital in Grand Prairie three years ago, they pitched it as a noble necessity for an underserved area. “Nationally, Grand Prairie was on the map as one of the largest cities in the country without an acute care hospital,” Suleman told…
And then there were eight. Tuesday afternoon, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed most of a lower court decision that kept most of the state’s remaining abortion providers open. The ruling makes the most onerous provision of Texas 2013 anti-abortion law, House Bill 2, enforceable. Every health clinic…
First, the good news that really isn’t good news at all, but whatever. As of late Monday afternoon’s 96-34 Texas House vote, both chambers of the Legislature have passed medical marijuana reform legalization. Texans who suffer from intractable epilepsy and are able to get their hands on low-THC cannabidiol oil…
Christin Bates, the Dallas Theological Seminary doctoral candidate/muscular dystrophy patient whose struggles with Texas’ health bureaucracy we chronicled here a week ago, won’t be stuck in a nursing home after all. Bates, 31, had spent the previous eight months futilely battling an alphabet soup of state health agencies in an…
When Texas lawmakers banned abortions after 20 weeks in 2013, the ban wasn’t totally devoid of compassion for women. There were a few exceptions to the 20-week ban; for instance, abortions “that are performed on unborn children with severe fetal abnormalities” would still be allowed. For Representative Matt Schaefer, a…
Whether we like or not, Obamacare has led to many more Texans being insured than were before the Affordable Care Act. According to a new survey from Rice University’s Baker Institute and the Episcopal Health Foundation, Texas had a 24.6 percent uninsured rate among residents 18-64 in September 2013, the…
A week after a sizable group of veterans descended on the state capitol to demand access to medical marijuana for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions, the Texas House’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday finally held a hearing on a cannabis-based treatment bill. Don’t expect the veterans…
Christin Bates is an anomaly. She is the only woman in her doctoral program at Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative institution in a field — evangelical Christian scholarship — that is slightly more progressive on gender equality than 17th century Massachusetts. When she completes her dissertation in five years or…
Five years ago, Cynthia Wilson says, she was uninsured when she discovered lumps in her breast and abdomen. So she made an appointment at Planned Parenthood, where a doctor performed a biopsy and said she had ovarian cancer. From there, Wilson says, Planned Parenthood referred her to get chemotherapy and…
At the end of 2013, there were just over 76,600 Texans living with HIV, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That’s a lot. A decade ago, the figure was about 50,000. Texas ranks fourth among states in total HIV cases and 11th in HIV cases per capita,…
Nina Pham, the Texas Health Presbyterian nurse who became the first person to contract Ebola in the United States, is suing the hospital. Pham was among the first healthcare workers assigned to treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who was exposed to Ebola in West Africa before being diagnosed…
As the vaccine “debate” has gained speed in the aftermath of a measles outbreak centered on Disneyland in California, reaction from the libertarian right has been fascinating. Senator Rand Paul stuttered something about vaccines needing to be voluntary and walked up to the thoroughly debunked “vaccines can cause mental disorders”…
Texas lawmakers are trying to strip Planned Parenthood clinics of funding that goes to breast and cervical cancer screenings for poor women because, as always, abortion. Not that a dime of taxpayer money ever — ever — pays for abortions at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else. But this is Texas,…
The fallout that’s come from state lawmakers Kevin Eltife’s and Stephanie Klick’s introduction of legislation that would legalize low-THC cannabis oil for use by Texans with intractable epilepsy is a prime example of what happens when you fight the symptom rather than the disease. The two Republicans’ bills are tailored…
Records obtained by the Austin American-Statesman show just how far North Texas school districts were willing to go to assuage parents’ Ebola fears last fall. Seven DFW districts — Burleson, Grapevine-Cooley, Garland, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Highland Park, Hurst-Euless-Bedford and Royse City — spent money on various levels of “deep cleaning” for…
The final pre-Supreme Court skirmish over Texas’ restrictive abortion legislation known as HB2 kicked off today in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The state, as it has throughout the fight over the law, stuck to the same bullshit. “Texas adopted HB2 for the purpose of raising the standard…
The first time any of us in the office considered that Dallas might become the Ebola epidemic’s American focal point was Tuesday, September 30. We watched Dallas County Health and Human Services director Zach Thompson brief the Dallas County Commissioners Court about the status of a then unidentified man we…
It was over four years ago when agents from the Food and Drug Administration began hearing disturbing complaints about USPLabs, the corporation headquartered in Dallas that sells “nutrition” powder, dietary supplements and other products to bros trying to beef up their builds. Customers complaining of bad reactions included a 16-year-old…
Oak Cliff’s University General Hospital, touted as one of Mayor Mike Rawlings’ GrowSouth success stories, is on life support — or maybe in an induced coma — while its owners try to sell the 111-bed facility. Houston-based University General Health Systems Inc., which purchased the former South Hampton Community Hospital…
