Making Health Care Affordable and Accessible

Right on Health Care is an initiative to ensure every American is in charge of their own individual or family medical decisions. When the insurance companies and the government are in control, the result is always higher costs, less access, lower quality, and worse results. ROH seeks to develop an effective system that prioritizes the needs of patients. 

  • Allow doctors to provide drugs directly to patients. Texas should directly provide medications to patients in order to cut down wait times at pharmacies, improve patient health by increases adherence rates, and lower costs by reducing the use of emergency care if they’ve had an adverse reaction.
  • Create association health plans. Texas should allow individuals and small groups to form an association for the purpose of aggregating lives and spreading risk for a large group plan. Large group plans enjoy lower rates and better benefits due to the distributed risk, and these benefits may be enjoyed by independent contractors and gig workers alike that choose to form an association.
  • Approve licensure reciprocity for physicians and nurses. Texas already has more than twenty health care license reciprocity laws that allow for an increase in certain providers. Allowing out of state physicians to practice in Texas will open up options for patients to get the kind of care they want and need, particularly in light of strained facilities due to COVID.
  • Give patients pricing information prior to scheduled services. Patients rightly believe that receiving pricing information before they make health care decisions will lead to lower costs and better care and avoid surprise billing. Quick access to services, like COVID testing, helps get patients healthier sooner, but patients need to know that exorbitant bills aren’t waiting for them after being treated. Texas should make it mandatory for medical providers to give patients the price for non-emergency procedures and treatments before performing them.
  • Reform noncompete agreements. Texas should strengthen its leadership role by specifically rendering void and unenforceable any language that places geographic and/or time-defined restrictions on a physician’s ability to practice medicine. The state should evaluate their policy toward NCAs in medicine to ensure that they maximize access to care and promote an open and competitive healthcare labor market.
  • Approve licensure for assistant physicians. Medical school graduates that did not match with a residency may practice and be reimbursed at the level of a Physician’s Assistant under a collaborative agreement. They may only practice in medically underserved rural or urban areas.
  • 1332 Waiver Implementation. The 1332 Waiver is a component of the ACA that allows states to take control of their exchange and design the offerings with more flexibility consistent with the needs of the state.