Jan. 21, 2015
Texas Physicians’ Healthy Vision for Texas
In unveiling their 2015 Texas
legislative agenda, Texas Medical Association (TMA) physicians urge state and
federal leaders to enhance the environment in which doctors practice medicine
so they can do what they do best — care for patients.
“The current health care landscape is filled with bumps, detours, and even
dangerous curves that harm access to care and detract physicians from patient
care, while increasing the costs for patients and taxpayers alike,” said Austin
I. King, MD, TMA president. “Yet all the while, Texas physicians are committed
to improving the health of all Texans. We ask our government leaders to help us
achieve that goal.”
TMA identifies these obstacles along
with many needed solutions in its second edition of Healthy
Vision 2020: Caring for patients in a time of change, which articulates
specifically and directly what TMA is asking of the Texas Legislature, the U.S.
Congress, and state and federal regulators to smoothing out those bumps. The
recommendations range from the complex (devise and enact a system for providing
health care to low-income Texans with realistic payment to physicians, less
stifling state bureaucracy and no fraud-and-abuse witch hunts) to the most
fundamental (pass no laws or regulations that interfere with the
patient-physician relationship).
“Our government must make it
easier — not more difficult — for us to care for our patients,” added Dr. King.
Here are the association’s top 10 recommendations:
TMA’s Top 10 Recommendations
- Increase
funding for graduate medical education.
- Improve
physicians’ Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program payments to more
appropriately reflect the services they provide to patients.
- Hold
health insurance companies accountable for creating and promoting adequate physician
networks.
- Devise
and enact a system for providing health care to low-income Texans that improves
efficiencies by reducing bureaucracy and paperwork.
- Stop
any efforts to expand scope of practice beyond that safely permitted by
nonphysician practitioners’ education, training, and skills.
- Promote
government efficiency and accountability by reducing Medicaid red tape.
- Protect
physicians’ ability to charge for their services.
- Improve
the state’s public health defense to better respond in a crisis.
- Preserve
Texas’ landmark medical liability reforms.
- Protect the
patient-physician relationship from corporate and political intrusions.
Dr. King said, “What’s guiding
our mission is promoting good health care for all Texans, and that’s the only thing.”
TMA is the largest
state medical society in the nation, representing more than 48,000 physician
and medical student members. It is located in Austin and has 110 component
county medical societies around the state. TMA’s key objective since 1853 is to
improve the health of all Texans. TMA Foundation is the philanthropic arm of
the association and raises funds to support the public health and science
priority initiatives of TMA and the family of medicine.
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Contact: Pam Udall
phone: (512) 370-1382
cell: (512) 413-6807
Pam Udall |
|
Contact: Brent Annear
phone: (512) 370-1381
cell: (512) 656-7320
Brent Annear |
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