AUSTIN, Texas — Despite bipartisan support, expanding the Medicaid rolls to include more Texans does not look likely this legislative session.

But, one bill extending coverage to new moms is moving again.

Capital Tonight first met Deneen Robinson at a health summit for Black mothers in 2018. She has been fighting for reproductive health rights as the policy director for the Afiya Center in Dallas. Robinson constantly engages with those who have been affected by maternal mortality and morbidity. 

“They don't want to run out of health care and have conditions that they have acquired as a part of their pregnancy that go untreated, because they know that that puts them at risk for dying, and they don't want that,” Robinson said. “For family members, they don't want another family to have to suffer the things that they have suffered.”

It is part of why Robinson is hoping lawmakers advance one of House leadership’s priority health care measures. House Bill 133 would expand Medicaid coverage for a few months to a full year after giving birth or miscarrying. Currently, mothers are kicked off after 60 days. Supporters of the bill said mothers’ physical and mental health require more time. 

“The overwhelming stress that folk experienced choosing to become pregnant and then carrying a child, there's stressors there. There are also environmental and systemic stressors… that people experience,” Robinson said. 

According to last year’s report by the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review committee, in 2013, 89 percent of the deaths were preventable and 31 percent occurred 43 days to one year after the end of pregnancy.

It has been over a month since House lawmakers approved the bill. But Wednesday, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee considered the proposed legislation. It is now being sponsored by the committee chairwoman, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who told her colleagues she believes this proposal is more comprehensive than existing programs in Texas. 

“This would help women stay in consistency — I know that I have some bills that are working — so that if a woman is in with a doctor, she gets to stay with that doctor and she transitions into other programs that are offered,” Kolkhorst said. 

While the House overwhelmingly approved the bill, it was not unanimous. Some legislators were concerned about the $84 million cost, which would increase over time.

"This is more than $80 million of an expense. It will probably cover an additional 100,000 lives. And maternal mortality, I would expect would be reduced as a natural consequence of this progressive legislation," said Dr. Debra Patt, chair of the Texas Medical Association's Council on Legislation.

The bill is one of the few, albeit narrow, ways the Texas legislature is looking at Medicaid. While the state has the highest number of uninsured in the country, none of the proposals apply to Texans who weren’t already eligible. 

“Every session, there are divisive issues,” Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas told Capital Tonight. “This session has been particularly overwhelmed with those kinds of issues. And when you get to something very practical, like Medicaid expansion, it's crowded out of the conversation, and it's really a huge loss for businesses, for people, for everybody.”

The lack of legislative action this session on Medicaid is why Robinson hopes they will move forward on this bill for mothers. 

“We will continue to fight because we know that people thrive in communities where they have access to health care,” Robinson said. 

Whether lawmakers get to it this session, the fight for sweeping health care coverage expansion continues.