Texas Women’s Health Program in 2013 increased the number of women served, tens of thousands of low-income Texas women still lack access to care. The state must work to maintain or increase the funding for this valuable program to help rebuild the women’s health care safety net and ultimately save the state millions in Medicaid dollars,” TMA said. The Affordable Care Act authorized
increasing Medicaid payments to Medi- care parity for certain primary care phy- sicians and services provided from Jan. 1, 2013, to Dec. 31, 2014. “Without congressional action, the rate increase will cease at the end of this year. We urge the state to permanently extend the rate increase beyond Dec. 31, 2014. It is vitally important to increase the number of physicians participating in Medicaid so that access is not hin- dered and Texans can get the care that they need,” TMA wrote.
The association also calls for an in-
crease in Medicaid payments for physi- cian specialties not included in the ACA primary care payment increase, includ- ing obstetrics and gynecology.
TMA calls for meaningful use moratorium
Because physicians “are feeling over- loaded by the myriad new Stage 2 mean- ingful use measures imposed on them,” Congress should stop Medicare from requiring any new meaningful use cri- teria, a TMA leader wrote in a letter to the chair of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. To read the letter, visit
www.texmed.org/WorkArea/Down loadAsset.aspx?id=30994. Otherwise, Matt Murray, MD, the chair of TMA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Health Information Technology, wrote to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), “Texas physicians — out of frustration — will withdraw from the Meaningful Use pro- gram at alarming rates.”
LAW FIRM PC
The letter also praised Chairman Upton for demanding answers from the National Coordinator for Health In- formation Technology about the future regulatory burden on physicians’ use of
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