Select Committee on Health Care Reform Market: Prices, Transparency, Competition

The Select Committee on Health Care Reform met to hear invited testimony only over the following interim charges. 1. Study the implications of excessive health care costs on the efficacy of Texas Medicaid and the private health insurance market and the resulting impact on individual Texans, businesses, and state government. Examine the interaction of specific factors of health care affordability such as transparency, competition, and patient incentives.  Make recommendations to expand access to health care price information to allow consumers to make informed decisions regarding their care; Examine the impact of government benefit, administrative, and contractual mandates imposed upon private insurance companies and their impact on employer and consumer premiums and out-of-pocket costs, including the effects of specific benefit and any-willing-provider requirements.  Make recommendations for state and agency-level mandates and regulations that could be relaxed or rep