Healthcare and Insurance Reform for Texas
Texas currently faces a healthcare crisis, holding the highest uninsured rate in the nation and leaving one in five neighbors behind. It is an absolute necessity to move past politics and work with anyone focused on pragmatic, bipartisan solutions for our communities.
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Expanding Access and Medicaid
To ensure families receive essential preventative and emergency care, we must prioritize state-level access:
- Medicaid Expansion: We must immediately expand Medicaid to bring federal tax dollars back to Texas, which is vital for keeping rural and community clinics open.
- Health Equity: We will bridge the access gap for underserved communities, ensuring a family’s zip code does not dictate their life expectancy.
Protecting Medical Freedom and Maternal Health
Healthcare policies must prioritize patient autonomy and survival:
- Medical Freedom: Government mandates must be removed from the exam room. We must trust women and families to make their own personal healthcare decisions in consultation with their doctors.
- Maternal Health: Texas must address the maternal mortality crisis, which disproportionately affects women of color, by significantly expanding postpartum care.
Affordability, Insurance, and Financial Protections
High out-of-pocket costs are devastating family budgets. We will enact rules to protect consumers from financial ruin:
- Prescription Price Caps: We will implement state-level transparency rules and strict price caps on life-saving medications, such as insulin.
- Medical Debt Relief: We will pass the Patient Protection Act to eliminate predatory billing practices and protect families from medical debt and ruined credit.
- Tax and Workplace Relief: We will end the sales tax on essential health items, including medicine and diapers, and enact mandatory paid sick leave so parents don’t have to choose between a paycheck and their health.
- Insurance Accountability: We will hold the property insurance industry accountable for unfairly hiking homeowner premiums.
Funding Our Future
We will prioritize people over politics by utilizing the Rainy Day Fund to provide direct relief to families while property taxes hit record highs. Furthermore, we will close corporate tax loopholes and end special interest tax breaks so that families are no longer forced to pick up the tab.