Texas Medical Association Board of Trustees Medicaid Resolution

Posted on | by McLennan County Medical Society

At its 2013 statewide Winter Conference, the Texas Medical Association (TMA) Board of Trustees formally adopted a resolution calling upon the political leaders of Washington and Texas to immediately develop a bipartisan solution to reform and expand the state’s Medicaid program.

“The Texas Medicaid system is broken, said TMA President-elect Stephen Brotherton, MD. “As a result, it is morally unconscionable for national-state public policy gridlock to deny proper medical care for over 1 million of our state’s low income families and Texans with disabilities.”

“While we expand the state’s Medicaid system, we need to reform it to attract physicians back to the program,” he said. “The current system offers the promise of coverage without adequate funding to ensure access to care. It is fraught with exasperating, unyielding red tape.”

“Additionally, we need to make sure Medicaid payments cover the real cost of health care. If we don’t address these two critical reforms, our state’s Medicaid physician participation crisis (only 3 out of 10 Texas physicians now accept all new patients) will worsen.”

Instead, Dr. Brotherton and TMA leaders called on state leaders and lawmakers to “look beyond the federal government expansion solution and design a solution that works for Texas and for Texans.”

“Texas physicians share both the taxpayer concerns of our state leaders as well as the very realistic medical care concerns of our state’s uninsured population,” Dr. Brotherton said.

TMA is calling on Texans to use their ingenuity to “devise a comprehensive solution that:

  1. Draws down all available federal dollars to expand access to health care for poor Texans;
  2. Gives Texas the flexibility to change the plan as our needs and circumstances change;
  3. Clears away Medicaid’s financial, administrative, and regulatory hurdles that are driving up costs and driving Texas physicians away from the program; and
  4. Relieves local Texas taxpayers from the unfair and unnecessary burden of paying the entire cost of caring for their uninsured neighbors.”

TMA is the largest state medical society in the nation, representing more than 47,000 physician and medical student members. It is located in Austin and has 120 component county medical societies around the state. TMA’s key objective since 1853 is to improve the health of all Texans.

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