Justices Won't Hear Medicaid Case
January 9, 2007
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to take Texas off the hook for an 11-year-old agreement that could expand health care under Medicaid to thousands of low-income children.
Written by Clay Robison, Houston Chronicle
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to take Texas off the hook for an 11-year-old agreement that could expand health care under Medicaid to thousands of low-income children.
Susan F. Zinn of San Antonio, the lead plaintiffs' attorney in the class action lawsuit, said she has asked Senior U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice for a hearing to enforce the agreement, or consent decree, which Texas signed in 1996, to improve health care and settle the case.
"The consent decree still exists, and the defendants (state officials) still have to comply with it," she said. "But given their history, we're skeptical of their complying with it. That's why we've gone back to the district judge."
Justice initially found the state in violation of the agreement in 2000, and in 2005 he issued an order citing instances in which services worsened.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Justice, and Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Monday refused to hear the appeal.
"All they (Texas) did was delay things, which is really a shame. Children need health care when they need it -- not after years of futile appeals," Zinn said.
A spokesman for Abbott defended the state's appeal.
"Plaintiffs have maintained this litigation against the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for more than a decade, with no end in sight," spokesman Jerry Strickland said.
"Unfortunately, the litigation continues, despite the fact that Texas today spends more money than any other state in the union on Medicaid screening outreach, and despite the fact that the evidence in this case has clearly demonstrated every eligible child in the state of Texas who requested treatment has received medical treatment."
According to the plaintiffs' lawyers, the number of children represented by the lawsuit who received no medical checkups increased from 941,000 in 1993, when the suit was filed, to almost 1.5 million in 2005.
Spokesman Ted Hughes said the Health and Human Services Commission was unable to verify the figures or estimate how much it would cost to expand coverage.
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