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Legislation designed to change how North Carolina government bills Medicaid patient treatment is close to becoming law. The House and Senate scheduled the floor votes Tuesday on an agreed-to compromise between both chambers that also creates a new state agency that remains within the Cabinet-level Department of Health and Human Services. (9/22)

Gov. Greg Abbott is letting lawmakers take the heat for any harm to disabled children and elderly Texans that could ensue from cuts to Medicaid payments for therapy. Abbott can do that, and deflect the blame to legislators who ordered up the cuts in their two-year budget, primarily because Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick won’t join the howls coming from nine other key lawmakers who sit with Patrick on the Legislative Budget Board. (Garrett, 9/21)

Lawyers for the state were again in Travis County court on Monday defending deep cuts made by state lawmakers to a speech and physical therapy program for poor and disabled children. Therapists and families have now sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission twice over the impending budget cuts, which they say will force health professionals to drop out of the program and illegally jeopardize care for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. (Walters, 9/21)