TAHC Executive Director Mia McCord Testifies at Senate Health Insurance Interim Study

Texans for Affordable Healthcare Executive Director Mia McCord today offered testimony in Austin for the Senate Health and Human Service Committee’s interim study on health insurance. Mia explained today that Texas is experiencing a true healthcare cost crisis and that legislative mandates have accelerated this crisis and made it worse. She also pointed to several policy proposals that could start alleviating the price increases facing Texas families. Read her written testimony below:

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Dear Chairwoman Kolkhorst and Members of the Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments related to the Senate Health Insurance Interim Study examining the Texas health insurance market and alternatives to employer-based insurance. Additionally, the committee was directed to identify barriers Texans face when navigating a complex health insurance market and take recommendations that help individuals obtain health care coverage.

I serve as the executive director of Texans for Affordable Healthcare, TAHC. TAHC is an independent, non-partisan voice for families and businesses around issues impacting the cost of healthcare. We have over 30,000 Texas advocates who share their daily struggles around affordability, accessibility, and transparency in our health care system.

TAHC strongly believes in two things that are vitally important to Texas families:

First, Texas is experiencing a healthcare cost crisis. While health care costs have gone up nationally, they are going up much faster in Texas. In fact, the average price of health insurance in Texas increased at a rate of nearly 13 percent, the fifth highest rate in the nation, according to data compiled from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

At $15.3 billion per year, Texans already spend more than any other state on prescription drugs, according to the 2022 Prescription Drug Report from NiceRx.

In the last 10 years, the Health Cost Institute reports that our emergency room prices have increased by 83 percent, making Texas emergency rooms the most expensive in the nation.

These are grim statistics, and they profoundly impact the physical and economic health and wellbeing of our residents.

Second, despite the underlying good intentions, the mandates considered and sometimes passed by the Texas Legislature will accelerate this crisis and continue to make it worse.

In the last two legislative sessions alone, Texas lawmakers have introduced hundreds of new mandates that — often on the behest of special interests — seek to dismantle the tools used to control health care and prescription drug spending. This is particularly true in the world of employer-sponsored health benefits, which one-quarter of Texans use to cover their health care costs.

It’s easy to understand how these policies pass into law, sometimes without much debate, when lawmakers can’t accurately estimate how they might increase costs. We need to fix that.

TAHC is urging our lawmakers to consider passage of something similar to Senate Bill 1581 from last session which would have established a mandate review process whereby legislators can be given unbiased, non-partisan information about the impacts that new legislation will have on the affordability of health care coverage within the state.

Under SB 1581, a new Health Insurance Mandate Advisory & Review Collaborative (HIMARC) would be established at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston. At the request of legislators, the HIMARC could provide a data-based analysis of proposed legislation and help lawmakers make more informed decisions about the policies they are being asked to vote on.

Another piece of legislation from last session that could help increase coverage while addressing affordability is House Bill 1001/Senate Bill 605 that would allow for a mandate-lite option in health coverage. This option, while not comprehensive, could provide employers and Texans with a form of coverage that might encourage more preventative care and cover basic health care services while allowing more employers to offer a form of coverage to their hard-working employees.

While these are just a couple of steps that the legislature can take to increase coverage for Texans and decrease health insurance costs, TAHC is committed to supporting innovative reforms that will continue to increase accessibility, affordability, and transparency in health care for all Texans. We look forward to working with this committee on these three pillars.

Sincerely,

Mia Garza McCord Executive Director
(512) 461-9644 - mia@texansforaffordablehealthcare.com