It’s not a good sign when a business’ expenses exceed its income. When that business has little control over what it gets paid – like many physician practices – it faces a troubling choice: cut costs, sell out, or close its doors. And when that business offers lifesaving services – like many physician practices – the consequences of that choice can affect an entire community.
Low payments from public and commercial insurance plans, artificial restrictions on physicians’ business activities, and increasing costs to comply with stifling government regulations and insurance company red tape combine to threaten the viability of many Texas practices. In a soon-to-be-published Texas Medical Association survey, 20 percent of Texas physicians cited “inadequate/decreasing payment/economic survival” as the top challenge they face.
The Texas Medical Association’s Healthy Vision 2025 – released last week – draws a roadmap for how legislators can ensure that Texas physicians can keep their practices running and robust so they can provide the care their patients need.
“Much of physicians’ payments are controlled by government price-fixing, and physicians have little leverage in negotiating contracts with commercial insurers,” according to Healthy Vision 2025. “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.”
Healthy Vision recommendations to the Texas Legislature include:
- Provide payments to physicians that at least meet the cost of caring for patients in the Medicaid program;
- Repeal payment cuts for services provided to vulnerable patients covered by both Medicaid and Medicare;
- Allow patients to obtain commonly prescribed medications from their physicians, on the spot; and
- Ensure that any tax legislation that affects health care does not harm patient care or access by reducing or eliminating exemptions for charity and under-paid care.
TMA staff and leaders have delivered Healthy Vision 2025 to all 181 members of the legislature, to the Capitol press corps, and to other key players. For the past two weeks, a TMA campaign of paid advertisements and social media outreach further promoted the document and its legislative recommendations.
How can you get involved?
Share the document with your senator and representative at next month’s First Tuesdays at the Capitol
Last Updated On
March 09, 2021
Originally Published On
February 07, 2019