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TMA's Advocacy Priorities

  • Healthy Vision 2020, Second Edition  

     

    If you don't know where you're going, the old saying goes, you don't need a map. Any road will take you there. But if you have a crystal clear vision of your destination, you need an equally detailed roadmap. TMA's strategic roadmap on state and federal advocacy initiatives for the remainder of the decade has been updated with a second edition. Get the pdf here or click to read more.

    Read Healthy Vision 2020, Second Edition  

  • Our Healthy Vision: Caring for Patients in a Time of Change

    Ensure an Adequate Health Care Workforce

    Texas has a large, diverse, and growing population that is growing less healthy and more ethnically divers, and needs more and better-coordinated health care services.

    Section 1

  • Preserve Physicians' Independent Medical Judgement

    The patient-physician relationship is unique in modern American life. Patients place their lives in their physicians' hands.

    Section 2

    Promote Efficient and Effective Models of Care

    CMS announced that the Open Payments system is once again avialable for physicians and teaching hospitals to register, review, and, as needed, dispute financial payment information received from health care manufacturers.

    Section 3

  • Promote Government Efficiency and Accountability by Reducing Medicaid Red Tape

    Texas physicians strongly support Medicaid. Without it, nearly 4 million poor and low-income Texans would lack health insurance, jeopardizing their health and well-being.

    Section 4

  • Repeal Harmful Federal Regulations

    Administrative costs in the U.S. private and public health care system amount to around $361 billion annually -- 14 percent of all health care expenditures. Insurers and government health programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, require physicians and their patients to follow too many complex, nonsensical, and redundant policies, rules, and procedures.

    Section 5

  • Use Health Information Technology Wisely

     

    As in nearly every other sphere of modern life, technology has delivered enormous improvements in medicine. Once-unimaginable diagnostic tools and treatments are now commonplace. Health information technology (HIT), properly implemented, has tremendous potential to advance quality of care, prevent certain types of medical errors, and streamline health care delivery. 

    Section 6  

  • Establish Fair and Transparent Insurance

    From the giant Texas Medical Center to a solo practitioner in a tiny Panhandle crossroads, physicians’ practices fuel the economic engines that grow Texas.

     

    Section 7

    Provide Appropriate Funding for Physician Services

    For decades, physicians have given away their services for free to patients who could not afford to pay. However, today’s health care market makes this very difficult. 

     

    Section 8

  • Promote Good Health; Save Taxpayers' Dollars

    One of the keys to maintaining health lies in physicians helping patients take responsibility for their own health.

     

    Section 9

    Protect and Promote a Fair Civil Justice System

    In our generation, Texas has taken no more important step to strengthen our health care delivery system than passing the 2003 medical liability reforms.

     

    Section 10
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