TMA President’s Eight-Point Health Care Plan Hits Social Media
By Phil West

Medicine is facing unparalleled challenges that threaten practice viability and impede access to care, according to Texas Medical Association President Bradford W. Holland, MD, who posited an eight-point plan that would ease the burden on physicians, and a new TMA video series makes each point more visual and vibrant.

Dr. Holland first laid out a plan to reform the nation’s current employer-based health care system in his inaugural speech as TMA president at TexMed 2026. His eight points:

• Restore physician-owned hospitals;
• Repeal Medicare self-referral restrictions under the federal Stark Law;
• Tie Medicare physician payment updates to inflation and implement site-neutral payments that ensure physicians receive the same payment regardless of where they care for patients;
• Revisit nonprofit tax status for health systems when they function like for-profit entities;
• Reform Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) insurance exemptions, for as he put it, those “loopholes allow insurance companies to deny care with limited oversight;”
• Protect physician judgment in the age of artificial intelligence;
• Support a collective voice for employed physicians; and
• Reclaim the profession of medicine by rejecting the term “provider” as a substitute for “physician.”

Short videos on each point will be viewable on TMA’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, plus the TMA President's page.

“[Social media is] an evolution of the way we communicate with physicians and with the public,” Dr. Holland said. “We need to have that connection. We need to be a real-time organization, and it gives patients and our member physicians a better idea about what’s going on, what we’re thinking about, and what we’re doing. It gives us a daily presence that makes us relevant, because we've got to go to them to keep them informed.”

Dr. Holland developed the plan during his year as president-elect, consulting TMA leaders as well as physicians across the state and nation to determine what facets of health care most need reform and how physicians can advocate for meaningful change.

He says one plank – physician ownership of hospitals – may be gaining traction, following a 2025 bipartisan bill introduced by two Texas members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

While elements of the eight-point plan might not be easily attainable, Dr. Holland says it’s important to be discussing them now. When a physician is asked what’s wrong with health care, he encourages them to select any of the eight points.

“I certainly hope to elevate the rhetoric,” the Waco otolaryngologist said. “If we aren’t talking about them, no one’s going to be talking about them … We can’t aim for the small. We need to aim for the big.”

The video series also allows Dr. Holland to further develop his role – and the role of TMA presidents succeeding him – in TMA’s social media outreach. In December 2025, TMA launched the Social Media Influencer Academy, a non-CME course available in the TMA Education Center that helps physicians create social media content to combat misinformation online.

Learn more about TMA’s Social Media Influencer Academy and watch Dr. Holland’s videos.