ARE THE POOR SUBSIDIZING THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS?
A new documentary alleges that $280 million reserved for indigent healthcare and hospitalization in Austin has been improperly diverted to Dell Medical School.
by Lise Olsen, Texas Observer
In November 2012, Austin voters were asked to approve a proposition that promised to expand health care for the poor. They approved a ballot measure creating a pool of $35 million in tax money each year for the nonprofit Central Health, an agency charged by the state with funding indigent health care and hospitalization in Travis County. Voters were told that the money would go to a new medical school at the University of Texas, where the poor would be treated.
But in 2017, Travis County taxpayers filed a lawsuit claiming that voters had been duped and that little or none of that money had been spent for clinical care; instead it was funding UT administration, research and support salaries. That lawsuit is ongoing. A short documentary, called “Inquest: An Examination of Central Health,” has now been released on YouTube. The Observer spoke with attorney and activist Fred Lewis, who with Austin filmmaker Steve Mims and Brian Rodgers, co-produced the 30-minute film that raises tough questions about whether liberals in the state capital broke laws and sold out the poor in a quest for economic development.
