The last three seats at issue on the House map were Margo (El Paso), Legler (Harris), and Garza (Bexar). In the interim maps, Margo is pretty safe, Legler has a chance to survive, and Garza will have to fight to survive. Pena is a goner.

The Democrats got very little for their efforts on the House map. Some of their gains: The Vo/Hochberg pairing was reversed; Hochberg’s minority district was restored. If anything, the San Antonio court bent over backwards after having been chastised by the Supreme Court and did little to help Democrats. The court changed seven districts in South Texas. Lozano got Jim Wells and Kleberg counties, but he also got San Patricio, which is a Republican-leaning county. That could spell trouble for him.

The bottom line is that the interim House map largely resembles the version passed by the Legislature. This was a foregone conclusion when the Supreme Court told the San Antonio Court it had overreached. The Democrats performed poorly in the negotiations. It was a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. There were multiple groups of plaintiffs and each of them had their own sets of concerns. Abbott won the day when he cut a deal with  national LULAC and MALDEF early in the negotiations. He split the Democrats and they never recovered. An attorney for the Democrats told me that they might end up with 7 to 8 seats over the original House plan. If so, the split in the House next year would look something like 93/94 R to 56/57 D, and many of the Republican seats are solid.

In 2006, on the day after Democrats gained five House seats in the November elections, I was on a panel to talk about the election before the Greater Houston Partnership. One of my fellow panelists, a Republican consultant, made this observation: “The battle for rural Texas is over and the Republicans have won. The battle for urban and suburban Texas has just begun, and the Republicans are no better positioned to win it than the Democrats are.” The 2010 elections changed the game somewhat, but in the long run, the observation will be proven correct. The battles will be over the urban fringes in Harris and Dallas counties, where the old suburban neighborhoods are being replaced by apartments. The Republicans had to stretch their districts pretty thin in order to have winnable majorities. These are destined to be minority neighborhoods, and the deeper into the decade we get, the more Democratic these neighborhoods will be. Legler may win this year, but he is probably not destined for a long career in the House. Nor is Margo. There just aren’t enough Republicans to make these districts safe. This applies equally to north Dallas. But the same dynamic that rendered them powerless to change the House map applies to the Democrats’ efforts to rebuild their party. They’re divided and rent by jealousies. For all their efforts in redistricting, they accomplished virtually nothing on the House map.

The delay of the primary will throw the runoff elections almost into August (July 31) — 63 days from the May 29 primary date. This seems nuts: Why do we need a nine week runoff period? (I’m going to answer my own question, with help from a commenter. The reason is the federal MOVE Act, which is designed to enfranchise military voters overseas. It takes a long time to send ballots overseas and get them back.) Any late summer date could have a big impact on the makeup of the 83rd Legislature. Most sane Texans will be in Santa Fe, Aspen, or Telluride. That means the stay-at-home crazies will make up the bulk of the electorate. This is the scenario envisioned by supporters of all the wannabes in the Senate race: Dewhurst barely misses winning without a runoff, and Cruz/Leppert/James slips into a runoff and wins, while Dewhurt’s establishment supporters are enjoying fine dining at Matsuhisa in Aspen and the Compound in Santa Fe.

If this scenario comes to pass, it means that the runoff electorate will be dominated by the ultraconservative base of the party, and the majority of the turnout will be tea party types. And the 83rd Legislature will be just as far to the right as the 82nd was.

On Thursday, February 23, I wrote this brief post about the Employees Retirement System’s decision to award the health insurance contract for state employees and retirees to UnitedHealthcare:

The Perry gravy train is back on the track. UnitedHealthCare is a client of … Mike Toomey. What a remarkable coincidence.

I went on to quote from the release:

Chris Cronn, a former Perry staffer, will become Vice-President for state affairs for UnitedHealthCare, and other former Perry staffers are on the gravy train. Their names appear below, following the text of an email that went out on Wednesday: UnitedHealthcare was selected by the Employees Retirement System of Texas (ERS) to be the third party administrator of the HealthSelect of Texas health insurance plan. As the administrator, UnitedHealthcare will process claims, provide customer service and manage the HealthSelect network starting September 1, 2012.  We will be working with ERS, and the current administrator, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, to make the transition as easy as possible for all HealthSelect members.

The names that followed included Cronn (as the new vice president for state affairs for UHC); Toomey; Laura Keel; Louis Saenz, a former senior adviser for Perry; and Victoria Ford, a former Perry health care staffer.

* * * *

What follows is information that I have picked up from various sources, including interviews and web sites. Some of this information has come from sources who are familiar with the terms of the new contract and are critical of certain aspects of the contract.

—–First, UnitedHealthcare’s competitors are not going to go quietly into that good night. I am told that ERS will meet tomorrow, and that representatives of the speaker’s office and the lieutenant governor’s office will be present. The switch from Blue Cross to UHC is going to have huge implications, both financial and personal. (Full disclosure: I am covered by Blue Cross through TEXAS MONTHLY’s parent company.) The UHC plan will cause major disruptions in patient care, at least in the beginning, as well as considerable cost-shifting to state employees and retirees.

—–ERS estimates that 16,000 members will pay an aggregate amount of $10 million annually over four years in extra billings, known as “balance billings.” This amounts to $40 million — nearly the identical amount to the alleged $41 million in “savings” contemplated by the contract, or 0.5% of the value of the contract. In other words, there are NO savings. It all comes out of the wallets of ERS members in the form of balance billings. If they do not use a UHC network provider, they will be hit with a balance bill for going outside of the network. (This is generally true of all health plans.) For members who remain “in network,” their payments are contractually predetermined. (My co-pay is $25 per office visit.) The actual cost of services may be considerably higher, but, so long as I stay “in network,” I am not billed for the higher cost. If members go “out of network,” the billing entity is allowed to seek payment of the balance–that is, the full cost of the services. As long as I am “in network,” I cannot be subjected to balanced billing.

—–ERS members will be balanced billed, however, in or out of network, because they no longer have access to the Blue Cross Blue Shield safety net, known as the Par Plan, which limits the damage done by balanced billing. The Blue Cross Par (short for “participating”) Plan has contracts with out of network providers who agree to bear some of the burden of balanced billing. UnitedHealthcare does not have such a safety net plan.

—–ERS also estimates that an additional 10,000 members will be required to change their primary care physician and their network. Contemplate the misery that this will cause. Nobody who is satisfied with his or her doctor wants to be forced to find another one.

For more about balanced billing, here is information from an Aetna web site:

Balance billing occurs when physicians bill their patients more than what the insurer
pays for their services. Since contract and state law generally prohibit participating
(par) physicians from balance billing members, it often occurs in situations involving
non-participating (non-par) physicians who do not participate with a health plan, and therefore do not accept pre-negotiated health plan rates. Usually members understand they must use
par physicians to minimize out-of-pocket expenses. But even a savvy consumer can
end up being treated by a non-par physician and receive a large bill for the
difference between the physician’s charge and the amount paid by the health plan.
This typically occurs when a member faces an emergency and selects the nearest hospital without knowing whether the hospital participates with his or her plan.

* * * *

I don’t want to rush to judgment here. I haven’t read the contract. I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of health insurance. I haven’t seen a comparison of the two plans. But the combination of possible influence peddling by the governor and his former staffers turned lobbyists, and the potential impact of the plan on thousands of state employees, should motivate the state’s leadership (excluding Perry) to determine whether state employees are getting the best possible deal here. The integrity of TRS has already been compromised by Perry’s appointments–remember the Michael Green whistle-blowing letter–and now ERS is likely to come under scrutiny. Dewhurst and Straus should seek a thorough airing of the differences between the new UnitedHealthcare plan and the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan that is no longer in force and determine whether state employees are well served by the new contract.

And what about ERS’s lawyer — Greg Abbott? He is widely  believed to be planning a race for governor. He would benefit significantly if Perry were to step aside. But would Abbott risk a fight with Perry by questioning the process that led to the awarding of a contract to Perry’s friends? Unlikely. This is really ugly, and it is going to get worse before it gets better.

The time was early Saturday afternoon.

I will provide an address tomorrow for friends who wish to send a condolence note.

The question came to mind when I read the NBC News story of the debate in the Virginia Legislature over a bill requiring ultrasound imaging. There was a huge fight over the bill, as there was in Texas. But something strange happened in Virginia. Here’s the story:

State Republican legislators have scrapped a bitterly contested proposal to require women seeking abortions to undergo invasive ultrasound imaging.

Shortly after Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell announced his opposition to the Republican bill, the state House on Wednesday approved a substitute version that still mandates an ultrasound but makes the transvaginal procedure optional.

The House of Delegates voted 65-32 for the watered-down version. Under the substitute, women would still be required to have an ultrasound before an abortion to determine the gestational age, but women subject to a transvaginal procedure would be able to decline [according to published reports--pb]. That likely dooms the measure.

The amended bill now returns to the Senate where its sponsor, Sen. Jill Vogel, said she will strike the legislation.

“There are moments when you are a legislator when you have to stop and you have to have a moment of real conscience,” Vogel said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I sort of had that moment this morning considering the outcome and the fate of this bill.”

Can anyone imagine Dan Patrick stopping to have “a moment of real conscience?” Or Jane Nelson? Or Rick Perry? Inconceivable. It doesn’t happen here. Our politics has gone off-the-spectrum nuts. The entire 2011 session was all about pandering to the far right. That is all our politicians know how to do–or want to do. Serious legislating has left the building.

I supposed I should answer my own question: When did Texas politics go completely nuts? I would say it was when Perry defeated Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary, eliminating the constituency of moderate Republicans, particularly soccer moms, from the playing field.

When Perry says he may run for president in 2016, the first thing that comes to mind is that the job will be not be open if Obama loses in 2012. If a Republican wins in 2012–Romney, Santorum, whoever–the job will not be available, because the Republican incumbent will presumably be running for reelection, and Perry will have to wait until 2020. In effect, when Perry says he is running for president in four years, he is essentially saying that he expects for Obama to win in 2012 and for the Republican nominee to lose. Otherwise, he would be challenging an incumbent Republican president in 2016. He’s depressing the turnout of his own party.

The Perry gravy train is back on the track. UnitedHealthCare is a client of … Mike Toomey. What a remarkable coincidence.

From the release:

UnitedHealthcare has been selected by the Employees Retirement System of Texas (ERS) to be third party administrator of the HealthSelect of Texas health insurance plan. As the administrator, UnitedHealthcare will process claims, provide customer service and manage the HealthSelect network starting September 1, 2012.

We are grateful that ERS sees us as a valuable partner and we look forward to serving the health care needs of state employees and their families. UnitedHealthcare currently provides benefits coverage to more than three million Texans, and we are excited for the opportunity to continue our commitment to Texas.

That’s what he says. I’ll believe it when he files. This seems more like a sign of weakness than a sign of strength — an effort to remain relevant in the wake of his failures in the presidential race, as if he is trying to fend off potential opponents. If Perry is planning on running in 2016 — which I do believe — he can’t take the chance he might lose a race for governor. That would finish him as a presidential candidate. Not that he has a realistic chance of winning the presidency.

I have expressed most of these opinions before, but if Perry is going to keep saying that he is running, it is important to recognize that he is speaking as a wounded and deeply flawed candidate who proved that the lack of respect for him over the years was well earned.

The worst thing about the likelihood that Perry may run for president again is that it means he will put the state through another bloodbath in the 2013 session, as he did in 2011, throwing the school children and the sick and the frail under the bus in the name of conservatism.

Before he talks about running, he needs to repair the damage he has inflicted on his brand. The way to do this, for a normal politician, is through good works. Perry doesn’t do good works. He revels in saying no. He immediately poured cold water on suggestions that he call a special session on school finance. In the middle of a horrible drought in the 2011 session, he refused entreaties to provide funding for the water plan — and, no, a few hundred million in bonds isn’t the answer. Perry’s strength is his understanding of his constituency. He knows they don’t care about school finance, or anything else having to do with governing. Old white guys don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the future.

I have made some inquiries today about internal polling in the Senate race. I am satisfied that the 38-27 spread in the UT/Trib poll considerably understates Dewhurst’s lead over Cruz.

Dewhurst 38%

Cruz 27%

Leppert 7%

James 7%

Jim Henson, co-director of the poll, writes, “David Dewhurst is roughly splitting the extremely conservative primary voters with Ted Cruz.  That’s not a sign of failure or defeat, but it is a yellow flag.”

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it seems to me that if Dewhurst is “roughly splitting” the extremely conservative vote with Cruz, that’s good for Dewhurst, not problematical. It means Dewhurst gets half of the extremely conservative voters and, presumably, all of the moderates. In this scenario, he wins.

An interesting question is whether the delay of the primary caused by redistricting helps Dewhurst or Cruz more.  It might be Cruz. He needs the extra time to increase his name ID. A longer race helps Dewhurst too, because Cruz’s campaign doesn’t have the deep pockets that Dewhurst’s does. Dewhurst wins a war of attrition.

I still have a hard time believing that this is really a 38-27 race.