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TOA
President's Update
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By David Teuscher, MD
TOA President
The
80th Texas Legislature is now in session through
the month of May, so better grab hold of your wallet. Better
yet, grab your white coat and plan to serve as a lobbyist for
a day at one of the First Tuesdays that the Texas Medical
Association is sponsoring. It is important that the Texas
Orthopaedic voice be heard and the best way for that to happen
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is to join
colleagues from all specialties in Austin for visits with your
legislators. If you have never done
this, it will be an enlightening event with low stress. You will be
educated on the issues, armed with materials
with the answers,
and paired with others who are seasoned Capitol visitors. See one, do
one, and soon you will be teaching one.
What’s at stake…and why is it important for you to lay down your scalpel
and hammer for a day? Believe it or not, there are forces in Austin who
seek to impede and limit your ability to care for patients in the
ethical and professional manner in which we were trained. These include
restrictions on your ability to invest in modern and innovative
healthcare facilities, further attacks from the mis-managed care
industry on your ability to bill for services you provide while they
pile on record profits, more burdens for you to participate in a workers
comp system that is still flat out broken, attempts to weaken and
overturn our successful liability reforms, taxes on your practice
income, inadequate funding for GME, Medicaid and CHIP, and the
relentless effort by non-physician practitioners to practice
orthopaedics without the benefit of medical school, orthopaedic
residency training, and ABOS certification. You are not paranoid; they
really are out to get you!
If the prospect of bad legislation producing a direct negative effect on
your patients’ and practice concerns you, join me in marking your
calendar now for the first Tuesday events on February 6th,
March 6th, April 3rd, and May 1st. You
can get more information and register online
here. After you register, send us an email at
info@toa.org to let us know to look for you. Let’s make sure that
our Orthopaedic voice is heard in Austin; after all, we own the bone…and
the joints too!
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Texas
District By District: Jim Keffer
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JAMES
(Jim) L. KEFFER was elected to the Texas House of
Representatives from District 60 in November of 1996. Born
in San Angelo, Texas on January 20, 1953, Jim graduated from
Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas. A committed small
businessman, he received a Bachelors of Arts Degree in
Telecommunications from Texas Tech University in 1975, and
has been President of EBAA Iron Sales, Inc., an iron foundry
with plants in Eastland and Albany since 1988. |
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In the 79th Legislative Session, House Speaker Tom
Craddick appointed
Representative Keffer as Chairman of the powerful House Ways
and Means Committee. He also serves on the House Committee
on State Affairs, the Legislative Budget Board, and the
Legislative Audit Committee.
Jim continues to be an active member of the Rural
Caucus, he has served on the interim Select Committee on
Public School Finance, and was previously the Chair of the
House Economic Development Committee.
Representative Keffer was named as one of the five best
members of the House of Representatives by Gallery Watch
who stated, “This is the kind of state representative who
should be at the top of anybody's list of the 'best.' … He
showed himself to be a good, hard‑working member of the
House more interested in passing good legislation than
getting good sound bites.”
Jim has received numerous awards including: the Texas
Association of Business “Champion of Free Enterprise Award”,
the Texas Medical Association's "Texas
Medicine’s Best Legislator Award", the Texas
Industrial Vocational Association’s “Outstanding Leader
Award”; the Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers
Association of Texas “Golden Flame Award”, the Texas Academy
of Family Physician’s “Patient Advocacy Award” and he was
recognized as a "Star for Rural Texas" by Texas Farm Bureau.
Community
involvement is important to Jim, and he is currently a
member of several local and national business organizations,
including the Board of Directors of the Eastland National
Bank, the Texas Cast Metals Association, the Texas
Association of Business, the Eastland Chamber of Commerce,
the American Foundry Society, American Waterworks
Association and the 3M Brownwood Environmental Citizens
Advisory Council. He also serves as a Deacon at the First
Baptist Church of Eastland.
Jim
married his wife of 31 years, Leslie Bradley Keffer, in
1975. They currently make their home in Eastland, Texas,
and are the proud parents of three sons.
Email
Jim Keffer to thank him for his work.
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This Week In Texas: Mignon
McGarry Memos |
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By Mignon McGarry
TOA Legislative Advocate / Memos: Tue Jan. 23 & Thu
Jan. 25, 2007
TOA Online Version: All Memos
January 23rd,
2007, Tuesday
As lawmakers tackle strategies
to stretch the spending cap and begin the arduous process of
crafting serious legislation,
they find time
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introduce a flurry of feel good resolutions .
These resolutions are
typically unopposed and spotlight their districts or satisfy relatively harmless needs
of constituents. So, in the calm before the storm, I thought
you might enjoy the following:
Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton)
filed a resolution naming the Texas blind salamander the State
Amphibian of Texas. This five inch cave-dwelling critter is
only found in the Edwards Aquifer in Hays County. The
resolution will not unseat any current amphibian as it appears
the state has stumbled along thus far without an official
State Amphibian.
Rep. Mando Martinez’s
(D-Weslaco) resolution to make the bolo tie the State Tie of
Texas is also likely to encounter little resistance since the
bow-tie crowd can hardly compete with the iconic western image
a bolo conjures up.
Rep. Warren Chisum (R Pampa)
introduced a resolution declaring the panhandle town of Friona
the Official Cheeseburger Capitol of Texas. This wording is
important because it confines the designation to the state of
Texas, thus avoiding the national attention Rep. Betty Brown
(R-Terrell) has drawn with her legislation seeking to claim
Athens, Texas the Home of the Hamburger. The state houses in
both Ohio and Connecticut have filed legislation claiming that
title for cities in their respective states. It seems the
stories of “turn of the century lunch counter inventions” are
closely cherished by constituents across the country.
On a more serious note, we
expect House committee assignments any day. Some capital
watchers point to tradition, assignments have come down on the
last Friday in January for the last two sessions.
January 25, 2007, Thursday
We are underway. The Senate began referring bills to
committees on Wednesday. Expect to see more referrals next
week. As of today, the Speaker has not named House committees.
Senate Bill 1, the budget bill, was filed and the Senate
Finance Committee will begin hearings on the various
components of the bill next week. On Monday, the Committee
will hear an overview of the proposed budget from the
Legislative Budget Board.
The State of the State, Governor Perry’s presentation of his
agenda to the Legislature, has been scheduled for Tuesday,
February 6th.
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The 2006 Fee Schedule Survey: Power to the Payers |
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Survey: Reimbursement
"collapsed" in 2006.
Calling
it "the worst looking data" ever seen,
Physician’s Practice
has released the results of its 2006 Fee Schedule Survey,
which indicates
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that
physician reimbursement has been falling in the United
States for the last several years. Payment levels overall
are 17 percent lower than in 2002, and 36 percent below
those of 2004. Researchers blame the decreases on insurance
industry consolidation, which gives payers much more
bargaining power even as their profits rise. For more
information click
here.
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