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Legislative Updates

Legislative Update No. 55, Session 79
By Tim Lee, Executive DirectorPrinter Friendly ||| Print as PDF

July 7, 2006

Texas Senate Committee reviews plan's effectiveness 

The TRS-Care health insurance program is being thoroughly reviewed by the Senate State Affairs Committee.  The work being done now is preparing the senate committee for action that may be necessary to deal with the rising costs of health care for education retirees.  This work is prompted by the committee's interim charges regarding health insurance for education retirees, as well as active educators, active state employees and retired state employees.  

The Senate State Affairs Committee, chaired by Senator Robert Duncan (Lubbock), scheduled three meetings to review state sponsored health care programs (including TRS-Care).  The first of those three meetings was conducted on June 27, 2006, and a TRTA's report on that meeting is available by clicking here.   

The next meeting is scheduled for later this month on July 26, and then the committee will conclude their work on this issue October 17-18.  Each of the meetings has a slightly different focus, calling expert witnesses from groups that represent various insurance providers, service providers, pharmaceutical providers, physician groups, and others.  TRTA does have an opportunity to testify at these meetings; however, is spending more time listening to these called expert witnesses first and then will likely testify at the October meetings.   

As part of this process, TRTA is hoping to get information from you on your experiences with TRS-Care, Aetna, and/or Caremark.  This information will be useful as TRTA prepares to testify in October.  Many TRTA members have already written in about both positive and negative aspects of the TRS-Care health insurance program, but many more TRTA members may want to have their concerns heard.  Next week, TRTA will have an online form that you can either fill out and email back to the TRTA headquarters or download and print and then mail back.  TRTA will email this information to its Inside Line subscribers when the online form is ready, or just check back to see when the online form has been posted. 

Thank you for your interest in this ongoing issue and participation in helping make the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee more aware of specific issues that must be dealt with in order to improve the TRS-Care program.  TRTA will continue to update you on this and other important legislative issues.

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