• 2011 Texas Legislature

    A Report Card to be Proud Of

    Our top priority during the 2011 legislative session was to protect the patient-physician relationship in every aspect of the health care system. With an enormous budget deficit and special interest groups from hospitals to midlevel practitioners lining up to take on medicine, it felt like everyone wanted a piece of our profession. Many of our adversaries wanted control of physicians, our practices, and our patients. Others wanted to weaken the Texas Medical Board (TMB), jeopardizing Texas’ hard-fought liability reforms, and Texans’ access to care. Some believed physicians were the cost drivers and needed restraint.

    However, when the session ended, physicians crossed the finish line with the reins still in hand. Even better, major steps were taken to protect and strengthen the patient-physician relationship from future outside interference. 

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    A Report Card to be Proud of (PDF)

    Texas Medical Association’s 2011 Legislative Agenda

  • TMA's Political Prognosis

    It was a tough legislative session from the outset. With an enormous budget deficit and special interest groups from hospitals to midlevel practitioners to those who wanted to emasculate the Texas Medical Board (TMB) lining up to take on organized medicine, it seemed the Texas Medical Association's agenda for the 2011 Texas Legislature faced tough sledding. But when the session ended on May 30, TMA scored some dramatic victories for physicians and your patients.

    Important Legislative Resources

  • NEW: 2011 Legislative Wrap Up

    This video describes the top health care-related issue in the 2011 Texas legislative session,
    the budget, and how the legislators' final budget affects patients and health care.

  • Latest Legislative News

    • Special Report: What Health Care Means to Texas' Fiscal Health
      From the giant Texas Medical Center to a solo practitioner in a tiny Panhandle hamlet, physicians’ practices fuel the economic engines that grow Texas. The economic benefit of doctors’ offices goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of direct jobs they support, including the quite-quantifiable ripple effect of those jobs and tax dollars through the local economy. It also takes in health care’s obvious, but somewhat less tangible, contribution to Texas’ continued economic development. 
    • CMS Plans Temporary Medicaid Fee Hike
      Texas primary care physicians would receive a temporary fee increase in 2013-14 for treating Medicaid patients if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) adopts a rule it proposed May 9. The proposal would make $11 billion available to states to increase Medicaid primary care reimbursement under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
    • Section 4: Repeal Harmful and Onerous Regulations
      After "health," the most frequently used word in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is neither “patient” nor “physician” nor “hospital” nor “insurance.” “Secretary,” as in “the secretary of health and human services,” is mentioned more than 2,500 times in the 2,300-page bill.
    • Appeal Your Rankings: TMA Tells You How
      If a health plan rates you for one of its physician ranking or tiering programs based on cost or quality of care, you don't have to take the results lying down. But you do need to act within 30 days of receiving your preliminary ranking results from the health plan.