Our Record of Success

Texas Employers for Affordable Health Care has a proven record of success helping rein in the excessive prices paid for employer-sponsored healthcare.

TOGETHER, TEXAS EMPLOYERS ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

House Bill 711 (88R)

Anti-competitive contracting practices inflate the costs of healthcare at the expense of Texas employers, their employees, and their families. During the 2023 Texas Legislative Session, Texas Employers for Affordable Healthcare worked in support of House Bill 711 (88R) , which takes an important step towards restoring market competition by banning anti-competitive contracting practices including:

Anti-steering clauses that restrict employers and health plans from encouraging enrollees to obtain services at a competitor, or from offering incentives to utilize specific providers ;
Anti-tiering clauses that require employers and health plans place all physicians, hospitals, and other facilities associated with a hospital system in the most favorable tier of providers;
Gag clauses that prohibit any party from disclosing relevant price or quality information to the government, enrollees, treating providers, plan sponsors, and potential enrollees and plan sponsors; and
Most favored nation clauses that prevent providers from offering prices below those contracted with a particular carrier.

And by ensuring that when health benefit plans encourage their enrollees to obtain a health care service from a particular provider – including offering incentives to encourage enrollees to use specific providers, introducing or modifying a tiered network plan, or assigning providers into tiers – that they do so for the primary benefit of the enrollee.

“We are grateful to State Representative James Frank for authoring this bill, Senator Lois Kolkhorst for sponsoring it in the Senate, and for the leadership of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dan Phelan to make strides to create the same free market principles that exist for all other markets outside of healthcare,” says Chris Skisak, PhD., TXEAHC executive director. “House Bill 711 will help create transparency, competition and consumer awareness – tenets long missing from the healthcare purchasing process.”