TMA's Advocacy Priorities

Healthy Vision 2025

Texas still ranks 41st nationally in physicians per 100,000 population. Not enough of our health care dollars are going to health care. Corporations are pressing harder to dictate patient care decisions. Insurance company abuses create unnecessary barriers to patient care. Unqualified providers are trying to make dangerous medical decisions. Behavioral health and public health need much more of our attention. Too much of our state’s population is uninsured. Infant and maternal mortality rates are alarming. We are losing our state's medical-school-trained doctors to residency programs in other states. And Medicare and Medicaid payments often don’t even cover the cost of patient care.

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Read the Full President's Message  

Let Doctors Be Doctors

The time physicians spend with their patients is the most satisfying and, obviously, the most productive part of their day. Unfortunately, research shows, most physicians spend far more precious minutes each day sitting at computer screens, filling out paperwork, or waiting on hold with insurance companies and pharmacies. This sad imbalance is one of the leading causes of medicine’s burnout epidemic.

Section 1

Enhance Practice Viability

Much of physicians’ payments are controlled by government price-fixing, and physicians have little leverage in negotiating contracts with commercial insurers. Neither Medicare nor Medicaid payment rates have come anywhere near keeping up with the cost of running a practice. Physicians need appropriate pay for the life-saving, health-preserving services they provide, and relief from archaic laws that inhibit them from providing services their patients need.

Section 4

Make Motherhood Safe

Childbirth, one of life’s greatest joys, can morph into tragedy when the infant’s mother dies. Even one death is one too many. Thankfully, most maternal deaths — 80 percent in one state study — are preventable. And for every new mother who dies in Texas, another 50 to 100 experience serious, life-threatening conditions. Building on the work of state and national maternal health experts, Texas physicians propose a clinically proven list of interventions to counter this troubling trend.

Section 5

Boost Access to Care

 

For more than a decade, Texas has held the title of “Uninsured Capital of the United States.” And for the first time in a decade, the number of children without health insurance increased in 2017, eroding Texas’ slow gains in coverage for children. The friction created when 17 percent of the population lacks health insurance threatens to slow our booming Texas economy.

Section 8  

Don’t Let Corporations Play Doctor

 

Patients trust their physicians to do what is best for their individual circumstances; physicians know that each patient is special and unique and requires their undivided attention. But the corporations that manage the business end of health care exist to make money. That unflinching focus on the bottom line — and persecution of those who report unethical incursions — has the potential to significantly and adversely impact patient care.

Section 9