A Healthier Texas

Ensuring that good health care is available to all is a mark of a good society.

It’s one of life’s essentials: the availability of quality medical care for ourselves and our loved ones. And all of us benefit when good health care is available to others.

But we could be doing much better than we are. Right now, Texas has the largest uninsured population of any state in the country, including as a percentage of our population. That doesn’t lead to good public health outcomes. And when doctors and hospitals treat large numbers of uninsured patients, it makes insurance premiums higher for everyone.

One of the smartest things we can do to improve health in Texas is to accept the billions of our own federal tax dollars available under the Affordable Care Act to expand health coverage.

John Turner believes that Texans shouldn’t have to send their tax money to the federal government, but not get their share of available tax dollars back. That just doesn’t make sense. Those lost federal dollars would help reduce the level of the uninsured in Texas, and would help lower the local property taxes we pay for uncompensated care.

Here are some more health policy ideas that make sense:

  • Protecting coverage for those with preexisting conditions, which is threatened by the lawsuit being pursued by our state against the Affordable Care Act
  • Promoting wider availability and use of vaccinations, which protect public health for everyone
  • Doing more to make mental health services widely available
  • Supporting better state funding for women’s healthcare
  • Promoting better health literacy, which will make us healthier and help reduce costs in our system.

All of those have been priorities for John as a legislator. They will be again if he has the privilege of serving you next term.

If elected, John Turner will support common-sense measures to make Texans healthier.

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