Years ago, Texas hustled to get kids on state health care. Now it’s kicking them off.

By Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/02/texas-chip-medicaid-enrollment/. “Years ago, Texas hustled to get kids on state health care. Now it’s kicking them off.” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. An impossible task. That’s what Randy Fritz was faced with in the summer of 1999. As executive assistant to then-Texas Health Commissioner William “Reyn” Archer III, Fritz had 10 months to create from scratch a new statewide health insurance program for poor kids who did not qualify for Medicaid. Why the rush? There was public pressure to get the program rolling after a recalcitrant Texas Legislature had been slow to adopt what leadership Republicans regarded as an entitlement. But underlining the urgency was the fact that Gov. George W. Bush had recently announced his candidacy for president — and his allies on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature knew that a successful program would...