The head of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Dan Stultz, says that the high number of uninsured Texans is driving doctors here out of business.  Twenty years ago 78% of Texas employers provided health insurance.  Today that number is down to 53%.  As a result, many uninsured Texans must turn to Medicaid or get their healthcare from emergency rooms.  Many doctors now refuse to treat Medicaid patients or patients from an ER because the reimbursement is too low or they won’t get paid at all.

Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance.  The leadership of this state left $900 million in federal health care dollars designated for Texas unclaimed and the money went to other states.  Does that sound like the state’s leadership considers healthcare an important issue?

The lack of commitment towards the education of doctors and nurses is also hurting the health care system.  Stultz said that Texas currently has a nurse shortage of 22,000 nurses yet at the same time turned away 8,000 qualified applicants to nursing schools because there isn’t the capacity at the schools to train all of them.

Texas needs to elect new leadership that makes the healthcare of their citizens a top priority.

The courts ruled that as long as the corporate money doesn’t advocate for a specific candidate, then it is free speech.  So these corporations can continue to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative advertising in political campaigns.  It’s not surprising that the courts favored the corporations.  In the Texas Supreme Court, consumers get ruled against 87% of the time.

The result of corporate money in 2002 was a Legislature that allowed Texas to have the highest homeowners insurance rates in the country, some of the highest electric rates in the country and deregulated tuition to make college unaffordable to many middle-class families.

We’ve got to elect a new leadership in Texas that puts middle-class families first and we have to elect new judges so that courthouses are places where people can seek relief, not places where corporations are given a free pass to do whatever they wish.

Equally ambitious was the $50 million media blitz launch for the plan. That $50 million, however, didn’t pay for anything but the most broadly drawn propositions, with no feasible solutions for implementation, politically, economically and socially. I, along with many in the audience Thursday, was seeking some clarifications & details. Unfortunately, they were not forthcoming, either in Pickens’ regurgitation of the figures on his website, or his evasion of questions by the audience. Any question that had the slightest hint of challenging or questioning any element of his plan, Pickens either ignored it and went back to his talking points, or mocked the mostly earnest undergrads. Issues raised included increasing energy conservation as a way to reduce foreign oil dependence, the non-sustainability of natural gas, the need for a better transmission infrastructure and the actual reserves of liquid natural gas in the U.S. Pickens said not a word on conservation, nor did he express concern on sustainability. While wind is a renewable resource, Pickens actually calls for more power plants to offset non-peak wind times, which energy experts believe is unnecessary. He supports a national power transmission “highway,” but offers no guidance on how to make this a reality. Pickens disputed the widely cited figure that the U.S. has 3% of the world’s gas reserves. This number is published by the Energy Information Administration, and is supported by industry sources. But Pickens said “heck, I don’t need the government’s numbers, I got my own numbers.” That’s the kind of hubris that turns people off Pickens, makes them suspect his motives, and it certainly doesn’t help win support. His plan overly relies on the actions of the private sector, including his many energy interests, and seems to willfully ignore the enormous amount of political effort needed.

T. Boone admits that his plan may not be perfect, but he claims that it’s the only viable one he’s seen. Maybe what he’s not seeing are all the reasonable, sustainable proposals that don’t have that $50 million media blitz.

This violation of campaign finance law helped lead to the election of Tom Craddick as speaker of the Texas House.  Everything that has happened since then can be traced back to what happened as a result of the 2002 election.  Some of the results of this new leadership included:  the deregulation of university tuition, the slashing of health care for children, putting tax breaks for big companies in front of properly funding public education, the limiting of access to the courthouse for ordinary Texans and the protection of homebuilders from their shoddy construction practices.

Yesterday was the start of early voting.  It’s up to all of us to clean out the House and bring in new leadership that puts working Texas families as their top priority.

The Sunset Commission recently held a hearing to discuss TDI and OPIC and changes that should occur at those agencies.  A proposal was presented to eliminate OPIC.  The insurance industry showed up to speak in favor of the proposal.  It’s not surprising that they would support a proposal that would lessen consumer protection.  However, Mike Geeslin, the state’s insurance commissioner argued against eliminating OPIC stating that it was important that OPIC remain an independent office.

Fortunately, for consumers the Sunset Commission voted to keep OPIC as a separate agency for 12 more years before it is reviewed again.  Let’s hope some changes in state leadership are made before then so that we have leadership that doesn’t believe that eliminating consumer protections is good for consumers.

Several employees of Governor Rick Perry helped design the application process for the project and then hired themselves out to Bermuda-based company, Accenture, which was bidding on the contract.  Not surprisingly, Accenture won the contract and started to develop and implement the system and 1000 state employees were about to be laid off.  However, Accenture proved to be incompetent and their pilot projects were such disasters that they were eventually let go and the state employees weren’t laid off.

As a result of this fiasco, Texas now has two applications systems for social services.  The old mainframe system and TIERS are both used to enroll applicants for social services.  A new report issued by the state auditor now says it will take $1 billion and 12 years to implement TIERS.  That cost is up from a $575 million estimated cost last year.  The report also said 20% of applicants to an assistance program had to wait more than the 30 days allowed by federal law to have their applications processed.

Privatization in Texas:  questionable contracting process, less efficient and costs more.  Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

The deregulation of insurance and electricity industries in Texas have also had a cost.  Sky high electric rates and the highest homeowners insurance rates in the country.  Former U.S. Senate candidate, Barbara Radnofsky, ties these threads together in an excellent piece published in the El Paso Times.

Insurance and electric companies want little regulation so they can profit more, and not for the State’s benefit. These companies make the twisted argument that “competing” companies will flock to deregulated states.

It’s untrue; more companies won’t create competition. Multiple, unregulated companies don’t work to keep rates low. They work together to keep rates high. That is why they flock to unregulated states.

The plea “Let us compete without regulation” is the same argument as teen agers wanting no curfew. “Trust us to come in at a decent time. No one else has a curfew. We’ll be responsible out there with our friends.”

Deregulated markets are neither free nor open. Neither competition nor bargaining occurs.

Thus, insurers raise rates because they can, and our electricity rates have gone sky-high.

The Texas Legislature deregulated these industries and the Texas court system protects these industries from ordinary citizens.  Ever try to sue a big industry in Texas for a wrong committed by them?  Even if you win in district court your case will be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and we all know the magic number there.  87%.  That’s the percentage of the time that the Texas Supreme Court rules against consumers.

Texas Watch will have the first stop on their Fix Texas Insurance tour today.  They’re going to be visiting cities all over Texas in the next few weeks to raise awareness on the need for insurance reform and propose solutions to the problem.

Texas Watch will be proposing common sense solutions which will lower the cost of insurance for Texas homeowners. These solutions include:

• Require streamlined prior approval of insurance rates so that homeowners are no longer forced to pay unfair overcharges.

• Make the Insurance Commissioner an elected position so that Texans can hold him or her directly accountable. Every Texan is impacted by the actions and decisions of the insurance commissioner and we should all have a say in who is deciding whether insurance companies are treating Texans fairly.

• End unfair underwriting and rating practices like insurance credit scoring and use of rating territories and tiers.

• Streamline policy forms so that consumers are better able to shop the market.”

Their first stop is in San Antonio today. Next week they’ll be hitting East Texas and the Metroplex. Check them out!