Texas’s latest budget has slashed funding for health care, and especially Medicaid. The cuts caused over 400 people, many of them parents of special needs children, to appear at a hearing in Austin last week. According to The Texas Observer, parent after parent took to the mic to complain that legislators were robbing their children of their futures. The Texas health care cuts will forfeit $200 million dollars in federal matching funds, for a total of $350 million in funding losses. These cuts will affect many therapists who work with special needs children.
One therapist from West Texas described himself as a “staunch conservative.” Even so, he charged that the cuts would hurt rural children disproportionately, because they already have less access to specialized care.