Sophie Novack
By Sophie Novack:
Ken Paxton Says New Anti-Abortion Law Bars State Employees from Donating to Planned Parenthood
This West Texas Town is a Reproductive Health Void
Family planning clinics and abortion clinics across Texas have been closing at an alarming rate. Rural hospitals are shuttering their maternity wards. For many Texans, this means traveling hundreds of miles just to access basic reproductive health care services.
Critical Condition: Part 3 Labor Away Family planning clinics and abortion clinics across Texas have been closing at an alarming rate. Rural hospitals are shuttering their maternity wards. For many Texans, this means traveling hundreds of miles just to access … Read More
A Decade of Texas Health Care By The Numbers
What do 2010 vs. 2019 comparisons tell us when it comes to lawmakers’ priorities on health care?
Texas is number one!…on many worst-of lists when it comes to public health. Over the past decade, there’s been upheaval in health care here and nationwide. In Texas, uninsured rates dropped a bit, then rose again. Access to reproductive health … Read More
Everyone Wants to End Surprise Medical Billing in Texas, but No One Wants to Pay for It
New patient protections go into effect January 1, but a last-minute rulemaking controversy illustrates how hard it is to fix even a relatively narrow health care problem.
Patient advocates in Texas celebrated this spring, when they finally hit a major milestone in the decade-long fight against surprise medical bills. Amid a flood of media attention spotlighting patients who had been hit with astronomical hospital charges for procedures they … Read More
The Last Nurse in Memphis, Texas
Carole Ward, a former nurse practitioner, ran the only health clinic in a small town in the Panhandle until she retired in 2017.
This story is part of “Critical Condition,” a series investigating Texas’ rural health care crisis. Read Part 1 here. Carole Ward, a 66-year-old nurse practitioner who lives in Hedley, ran the Memphis health clinic from 2005 until she retired and the clinic … Read More
Driving My Life Away
As physicians leave small towns, rural Texans must travel farther and farther for health care.
Critical Condition: Part 2 Driving My Life Away As physicians leave small towns, rural Texans must travel farther and farther for health care. + + + by Christopher Collins and Sophie Novack November 18, 2019 Yolanda Narvaez knew something … Read More
‘You Can Only Take So Much’: Low-Income Hurricane Harvey Survivors Sue Over ‘Discriminatory’ Recovery Process
The lawsuit accuses state and federal officials of favoring wealthier, white homeowners over poorer black and Hispanic renters.
Former city council member John Beard has a term to describe Port Arthur residents. In his Gulf Coast city of 55,000, people have all but given up on getting the help they need to recover from the storm that damaged … Read More
Scenes from a Rural Hospital’s Final Day
Chillicothe Hospital closed its doors on July 22. Its closure reverberated through the community in both expected and surprising ways.
This story is part of “Critical Condition,” a series investigating Texas’ rural health care crisis. Read Part 1 here. Inside a tiny frontier hospital at the Texas Panhandle’s southern boundary, Judy Borton is hunched over the same gas stovetop that … Read More
State Investigators Identify ‘Serious Contractual Violations’ by the Heidi Group
A new report from the health inspector general says the Heidi Group, an anti-abortion group tapped to replace Planned Parenthood in state family planning programs, misused taxpayer funds, and calls for an expanded investigation of the group’s contracts.
State investigators now say an anti-abortion group tapped to replace Planned Parenthood in Texas’ reproductive health programs must repay nearly $1.6 million amid “serious contractual violations.” That tab could still go much higher. In a long-awaited report released Thursday, investigators … Read More
Critical Condition
Rural health care is in crisis around the country, but Texas is suffering the most. At least 20 small-town hospitals have closed since 2013.
a Texas Observer Special Investigation Critical Condition Rural health care is in crisis around the country, but Texas is suffering the most. At least 20 small-town hospitals have closed since 2013. More than one-fifth of Texas’ 254 counties have only … Read More
