Grantee reporting shows impact of lack of affordable health care in Texas

Doug Curran in his office at the East Texas Community Clinic in Athens last November. Curran helped open the safety-net clinic in 2020 after decades of practicing medicine in the rural area and seeing the fallout of Texas’ high uninsured rate. Credit: Blaine Young

In Texas, one of 12 states that refused federal funding to expand Medicaid to provide care for more low-income people, residents have less access to health care than in any other state. Reporters Kim Krisberg and David Leffler, writing in Public Health Watch, co-published with The Texas Tribune and supported by the Fund, documented the many weaknesses in the Texas Medicaid program that even denies coverage to a family of three earning more than $4,000 a year. Those who do qualify struggle to find doctors who accept Medicaid because the state’s reimbursement rates are so low. The story is part of The Holdouts, a collaboration of several newsrooms in the 12 states which refused to expand Medicaid.