AUSTIN – Lawmakers have been thinking ahead to a massive shortfall, topping $10 billion, that’s probably coming when they write the next budget in 2011. But state officials told them Monday that they’ll have to fix a hole in the current budget, too.

Rising health care costs have dug a hole of about $1.7 billion, the officials said.

Texas has about 350,000 more poor people on government health insurance than it did last year, and health care costs also are skyrocketing for state employees and prison inmates, several agency heads told the House Appropriations Committee.

“We’re running 11 percent … growth in the Medicaid program,” said Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs, referring to the nation’s main health care program for the poor. Lawmakers assumed enrollment would grow by only 3.4 percent this year, he said.

Read more @ the Dallas Morning News.