AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas' share for providing health care to poor children, the impoverished elderly and the disabled is growing faster than tax revenues to pay for services, creating another state budget challenge next year, top agency officials told lawmakers Monday.
Texas' Medicaid director Billy Millwee told lawmakers that his program will likely achieve only 88 percent of the cost savings forecast in the current budget. Experts had warned lawmakers last year that they were underfunding the Medicaid program by $4.8 billion, an amount lawmakers will have to make up when they meet again next year.
Agency officials told the House Appropriation Subcommittee that the number of people qualifying for the Medicaid program nearly doubled between 2000 and 2011, and the number of poor children grew more than 10 percent in 2010 alone. The Medicaid population grows an average of 6.3 percent a year.
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