Health Issues

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law.

For the state of Texas, the provisions of this new law offer solutions to many of our looming health care-related crises:

• Texas has led the nation for two decades in the percentage of our population without health insurance according to the U.S. Census.
• Almost six million Texans—one out of every four people in our state—lack any kind of health insurance.
• Texans have seen health insurance premiums jump forty percent in just five years—ten times faster than Texas household incomes.
• More than eighty percent of uninsured Texans are in working families, and three quarters of them make incomes above 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.

Health insurance is too integral to the state’s health care infrastructure to be treated as an optional commodity. Texas has a responsibility to enact legislation that will allow the state to participate in the reformed system in a way that best serves its citizens.