The next Texas legislative session is shaping up to be an unprecedented opportunity to make critical progress in reining in health care prices: Federal legislation has teed up a huge opportunity to expand price transparency in a meaningful way, and experts of all political perspectives are converging around the underlying problems. And lawmakers who act on this opportunity will have an important constituency cheering them on: voters.
According to new KFF survey data, health care expenses are now voters’ top economic concern, and this is the case across partisanship, with substantial shares of Democrats, independents, and Republicans saying they are “very worried” about being able to afford health care for themselves and their families, and that’s affecting how they’re thinking about voting in upcoming elections.
When the Texas Legislature convenes following this year’s elections, lawmakers and state officials will have an opportunity to act on voters’ top priority by making meaningful changes to Texas’ health care market by improving transparency and increasing competition in ways that can lower expenses for Texas employers and families.
One way they can do this is by taking up legislation filed during last year’s Texas Legislative Session by Rep. James Frank and Sen. Kelly Hancock — two matching bills in the Texas House and Senate that would have required providers to indicate the specific facility where services were delivered and would have prohibited facility fees for telehealth or preventative care, which don’t require patients to use a facility.
Lawmakers will also have an opportunity to build on the important reforms of 2023’s House Bill 711, which outlawed several types of anti-competitive contracting clauses and putting to work the Texas All-Payor Claims Database, which provides state officials with actionable information to improve the value of state employee benefit plans. That information can also provide crucial insights to employers who provide coverage for over 14 million Texans.
For decades, the problem behind health care affordability has been clear: it’s the prices, which are being driven upward in part by market consolidation. Voters understand this, as do experts of all political perspectives. And now recent action at the federal level has opened a new pathway for Texas lawmakers to adopt reforms that will help expand transparency and competition, paving the way for higher value, lower priced health care for Texas.