In March 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (HR 3590) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HR 4872) into law. This legislation will have far-reaching effects on the state’s budget as well as its citizens, its businesses and, thus, its economy.
This report, Diagnosis: Cost – An Initial Look at the Federal Health Care Legislation’s Impact on Texas (PDF, 832 KB), includes our preliminary estimates of these effects. It should be noted that many factors are still unknown as the supporting rules have not been written by the federal government. In fact, out of the 78 major provisions examined in this report, there were 50 for which the fiscal impact could not be determined at this time.
The Comptroller’s office continues to monitor the latest developments regarding federal changes to the health care system and will update the fiscal impact estimates included in this report as the supporting rules and other information become available. Sign up to receive e-mail updates.

Upcoming Health Care Report

In fall 2010, the Comptroller will publish a larger report examining the effects of health care spending on Texas finances to provide all interested parties with a solid analysis of the overall cost of health care to the state. This report will capture the total costs to the state of health care, including direct health-related services and the accompanying administrative costs. The report also will provide in-depth analysis of factors driving the cost of health care and examine regional differences in costs in the Employees Retirement System and Medicaid.
View links to the full text of the federal health care legislation and other resources.
More information is available here:
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/healthFed/