Where Texas Physicians Stand Up for Border Patients

Texas physicians representing the Border Health Caucus hosted a roundtable discussion and met with members of Congress in Washington, D.C., to discuss obstacles interfering with their ability to deliver health care.

For the past seven years, physicians annually have traveled to the nation’s capital to discuss how Congress’ decisions — or lack of decisions—affect doctors’ ability to care for their patients. At the top of their list is Medicare’s flawed Sustainable Growth Rate physician payment formula, which if Congress doesn’t fix, physicians could face a pay cut of almost 30 percent Jan. 1, 2013. The cut would jeopardize border Texans’ access to a doctor. BHC physicians also discussed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s impact on their profession, practice and patients, and discuss the devastating fallout of the newly implemented Texas Medicaid policy, limiting what it pays physicians who treat dual eligible patients is having on physician practices and patients. Physicians told Texas’ congressional delegation these cuts have created a medical emergency for thousands of dual-eligible Texans and the physicians who care for them.

Border Health Caucus main page