George Texs blog

GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ ideas and dreams ,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “ for life’s important moments .” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to platform for patients trying to escape medical billing nightmares. One study found that, in 2020, the annual number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes — about 200,000 — was 25 times the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 current campaigns are dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, who have spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, has a price tag of about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment. Perhaps the most damning aspect of this is that paying...

Estados están invirtiendo miles de millones de dólares en un experimento de atención médica de alto riesgo: utilizar fondos ya escasos de seguros de salud públicos para proporcionar vivienda a los estadounidenses más pobres y enfermos. California está liderando esta tendencia, destinando gran parte de un presupuesto de $12 mil millones a una ambiciosa iniciativa de Medicaid para ayudar a los pacientes sin hogar a encontrar vivienda, y a pagarla para evitar el desalojo. Arizona está asignando $550 millones de fondos de Medicaid que se usarán para cubrir seis meses de alquiler para personas sin hogar. Oregon está gastando más de $1,000 millones en servicios como asistencia de alquiler de emergencia para pacientes que no tienen un techo. Incluso Arkansas, un estado predominantemente conservador, destinará parte de unos $100 millones para ofrecer vivienda a sus más necesitados. Al menos 19 estados están redireccionando dinero de Medicaid —el programa estatal-federal de salud pa...

The Florida Supreme Court will not resolve the fate of a former Black-opportunity congressional district in North Florida in time to affect the November elections, after rejecting voting rights groups’ request that it fast-track the case. The justices issued a terse notice Monday rejecting the plea from Black Lives Matter Capacity Building Institute, League of Women Voters of Florida, Equal Ground Education Fund, Florida Rising Together, and individual voters to schedule oral arguments during the first week in April. “Florida has already held one election under what petitioners argue, and two different trial courts have found, is an unconstitutional redistricting plan. Without an expedited briefing schedule, petitioners and Floridians will again vote under a redistricting plan of questionable legality,” those plaintiffs argued in a motion filed with the court Feb. 1. In a reply filed a week later, attorneys for the state argued there’s simply not enough time to resolve the ...

WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic senators on Monday distanced themselves from comments Donald Trump made about NATO over the weekend, when the GOP front-runner said the United States might not assist those countries should Russia expand its war in Europe. Speaking at a  rally  in South Carolina, Trump recalled a conversation he had when he was president with an unnamed leader of a NATO country, who at the time was expressing concerns about Russia’s military plans. “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, would you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes,’” Trump said. “‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You’ve got to pay.” The remarks this weekend and comments Trump made throughout his time in the Oval Office about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provoked frustration among some Republican senator...

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of an occasional States Newsroom series called When and Where: Abortion Access in America, profiling individuals who have needed abortion care in the U.S. before and after Dobbs. The first installment can be found  here . Amanda D’Angelo only had a few weeks to get used to the idea that she was going to be a twin mom, before her eight-week scan revealed one had died. It’s a relatively common occurrence early in twin pregnancies and, while it was upsetting, she took comfort in still being pregnant. She went on her honeymoon with her husband to Hawaii in July 2021, and the newlyweds smiled for a photo on the beach with a double rainbow behind them — a rainbow being the widely regarded symbol of having a living child after losing one during pregnancy. She didn’t know just how symbolic that rainbow would become until a few weeks later. D’Angelo went to a clinic in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a routine 12-week scan on her lunch br...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly early Tuesday to approve a $95 billion emergency spending package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The measure now goes to the U.S. House, where Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t committed to putting the bill on the floor for debate or votes amid opposition to the military and humanitarian assistance from some in the right flank of his conference. The Senate’s 70-29 vote to approve the bill shows it has broad bipartisan support in at least one chamber of Congress, though it’ll need House approval before it can go to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, released a statement late Monday evening indicating he doesn’t approve of the Senate bill in part because it does not contain any immigration provisions, after Senate Republicans  tanked a bipartisan border security deal  that was also opposed by Johnson and House GOP leaders. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to...

Motorists pulled over and found not to have valid driver’s licenses would face mandatory jail time if arrested three times for that offense, according to a proposal moving its way through the Legislature. But questions regarding how the measure could be enforced remained unresolved following a committee meeting on Tuesday. The measure ( SB 1324 ) sponsored by Hernando County Republican Blaise Ingoglia, would subject a person found driving without a license to second-degree misdemeanor penalties of up to 60 days behind bars. A second offense would become a first-degree misdemeanor subject to up to one year in jail, and any third or subsequent offense would in addition bring a mandatory minimum 10 days in jail. “We’ve seen multiple instances of people entering the state of Florida, whether they are legal residents, if they are here illegally, and driving without ever having a license,” Ingoglia told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice. I...

WASHINGTON — Accepting former President Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity would embolden future presidents to use military force to stay in office indefinitely, a group of anti-Trump Republican former officials warned in a Tuesday brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rejecting Trump’s immunity claim, which he has said should protect him from prosecution on charges of lying to and encouraging supporters who turned violent on Jan. 6, 2021, and attacked the U.S. Capitol, is essential to preserve American democracy, the officials wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief . The 26 former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, lawmakers, and others who authored the brief were elected Republicans or served in Republican administrations. They include former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, and former U.S. Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, asked the court  Monday to furt...

Former President Donald Trump’s choice to be the next chair of the national Republican Party briefly teamed up last election cycle with a voter fraud watchdog group closely tied to Cleta Mitchell, the conservative lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 vote. Trump is backing Michael Whatley, chair of the North Carolina GOP, to be the next Republican National Committee chair, The New York Times reported Feb. 6. Ronna McDaniel, who now holds the post, has told Trump she will step down later this month, according to the Times. Michael Whatley. Credit: NC GOP Whatley, a veteran GOP campaign operative who  served  in the administration of President George W. Bush, is  reported  to have won Trump’s support because he backs Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread voter fraud. Last year, Trump  endorsed Whatley, who is now the RNC’s general counsel, to be the organization’s co-chair. Whatley spoke during a 2022 confer...

WASHINGTON — In their second attempt in as many weeks, U.S. House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, marking an inflection point in the growing rift between the GOP and the White House over immigration policy decisions at the southern border. In a 214-213   vote , the House approved  two articles of impeachment  that charged Mayorkas with willfully ignoring immigration law and lying to Congress about the status of border security. It is only the second time in history that a Cabinet member has been impeached; William Belknap, the secretary of war and a former Iowa state legislator, was impeached in 1876. A vote on the same resolution failed spectacularly  last week , 214-216, while House GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana was absent due to ongoing cancer treatments. Republican Blake Moore of Utah switched his vote from “yes” to “no” as a procedural move to allow the resolution to be reconsidered. “House R...

The No Surprises Act , the landmark law intended to protect patients from surprise out-of-network medical bills, has come with, well, some surprises. A little more than two years after it took effect, there’s good and bad news about how it’s working. First, it’s important to note that the law has successfully protected millions of patients from surprise bills — incidents like an out-of-network emergency air ambulance ride or treatment by an out-of-network anesthesiologist or emergency room doctor, when the patient made every attempt to stay in network. Most Americans are covered by health insurance plans with networks of physicians and hospitals. Stay in network, and you generally pay only deductibles, co-payments and other cost sharing. But go outside your network, either deliberately or inadvertently, and you could be on the hook for huge medical bills.  About 22 percent of emergency visits in 2015 resulted in a surprise out-of-network physician bill. The No Surprises Act...