Big Country Politics: Rep. Stan Lambert discusses hot topics in Texas, including school vouchers & healthcare monopolies

BIG COUNTRY, Texas ( KTAB/KRBC ) — In this week’s episode of Big Country Politics, District 71 Texas House Representative Stan Lambert discusses hot topics in the state, including school vouchers, rural healthcare, monopolies, as well as Abbott’s endorsements against those who challenged vouchers.

Lambert shared that they are planning the next four to five months in anticipation of the general election in November.

“We’re not waiting any longer to begin working on our agenda as far as legislation that we would like to see brought forward in the next legislative session. So we’re having meetings, we’re talking with constituents, we’re talking with different groups about water, broadband, health care, and school funding, which is a major topic bordering security. Of course, we’re just trying to make the rounds and visit with as many people as we can all,” Lambert shared.

Of the 21 Republicans who challenged Governor Greg Abbott and voted against school vouchers, 14 representatives will not return. Seven incumbents voted against these vouchers, including Lambert and Representative Drew Darby from the Concho Valley, and nine incumbent candidates who were against vouchers. The last five incumbents did not run; pro-voucher-endorsed candidates filled their seats.

Lambert mentioned that it is difficult to predict the makeup of school vouchers in legislation at this point.

“It’s really hard to start counting until you really get past November and know kind of what that makeup is going to be, how many Republicans, how many Democrats, and then which ones have publicly said they were supporting vouchers or not supporting vouchers. A little bit more time is gonna have to pass before we can kind of really settle on where we met,” Lambert explained. “We need to try to address some issues there. Still, I think some of them are undecided. They may have voted for vouchers, but they also represent rural areas of the state. And there may be opportunities to circle back with some of those representatives and talk some more about the pros and cons and see if their constituents are telling them something different than during the last session whenever they voted for a voucher.”

He mentioned that Abbott’s plan to eliminate opponents of vouchers was effective, and he is curious to see how politics in Austin will evolve.

“Certainly, the governor’s plan and his intentions to reduce the number of anti-voucher representatives worked pretty well. He was successful in removing some of these rural Republicans from the House. So, there’s a difference between campaigning and governing. Even some of the ones that were elected that campaigned on the pro-voucher issue, it’d be interesting to see just when they get to Austin and they start hearing from their constituents, and just what their feedback is going to be and just where their position finally ends up. So we probably know earlier in January, kind of where that issue is going to go. If it looks like it’s a landslide, or if it looks like it’s still going to be very, very, very marginal in terms of either side,” Lambert shared.

However, Lambert added that he has received positive feedback from the residents of the Big Country.

“I’ve not heard anyone locally say you took the wrong position. I’ve heard mostly from folks who said, ‘We appreciate the position you took.’ It was a hard stance to take, particularly when you saw just how much opposition came against you in terms of outside influence and outside money, the endorsements that my opponent received. So it makes me feel like we were on the right side of the issue as far as rural Texas and rural America and we will continue to fight that fight. But it’s gonna be a lot harder because the numbers have certainly decreased since the primary,” Lambert said.

Just last month, District 19 U.S. Congressman Jodey Arrington appeared on Big Country Politics to discuss his initiative to break up healthcare monopolies (House Bill 3301). Lambert shared that the bill was basically restricted to nine counties in the state of Texas that have two or fewer hospitals under a Copa Certificate of Public Advantage .

“What it does is it allows one health care provider to merge or to acquire another health care provider in that same county. It does so under the premise that no services or programs will be cut. There will be no rate increases other than just under normal conditions, cost of living, and so forth, and they will be under a lot of scrutiny if they go this route. But it gives the public a lot of confidence and knowing that they are under more scrutiny, supervision, and regulation by the state of Texas now than they would have been if they had emerged without the Coppa legislation being approved,” Lambert explained.

He mentioned that there were many misconceptions about Hendrick’s acquisition of Abilene Regional.

“There’s a lot of there’s a lot of myths out there about how Hendrick was able to acquire Abilene Regional; Abilene Regional was on the brink of failure, basically their own back company in Franklin, Tennessee, that owed $16 billion in debt. They were trying to shed assets in order to create liquidity to pay off their debt. So that’s why they were in the business of trying to sell Abilene Regional; Abilene Regional had not been investing any of their excess profit into the hospital; they were decreasing all their services, staff, and everything else. Technology was not being reinvested. So this seemed like a natural thing to do to keep our healthcare system in Abilene strong,” Lambert shared. “Once you see the numbers and what Hendrick has done since the merger occurred, you will see that they’ve invested over $30 million in Abilene Regional. Since then, supposedly, Abilene Regional was only investing about a million dollars of their profit back into the hospital. Hendricks has increased the number of employees overall, now they’re up to about 5300. They’re the largest private employer in Taylor County and in the Big Country. They continue to expand programs and services; they continue to find ways to keep healthcare cost-efficient, affordable, accessible, and high quality.”

He shared that his concern throughout the process was to ensure that Big Country residents had good quality health care. He added that he believes it’s the opposite of monopolization.

“Tom Green County was using it in Shannon Hospital, acquiring the other hospital there. So, with similar goals and requirements as far as supervision and regulation are concerned, they can’t raise rates without going through HHSC [The Texas Health and Human Services Commission} and asking for a rate increase. Those aren’t just rubber stamps; they are looked at very specifically, and they have a lot of scrutiny in terms of whether they can approve those rate increases. So it’s totally the opposite of monopolization, in terms of what Congressman Arrington is talking about, because I think what he’s looking at is from a much broader perspective, in terms of the large healthcare issues that are going on across our nation, that has to do with Big Pharma, big pharmacy companies that are making billions of dollars with our insurance providers that are making billions of dollars,” Lambert said. “We’ve got large hospital systems that continue to apply for grants when they should not be able to apply for grants. I think he’s looking at it more from his position as budget director in the US House of Representatives: how do we balance the US budget? What areas are we going to be able to find resources in order to make to make the numbers work? So I think he’s looking at it from a much higher level. How do we address the bigger problems? Not so much the issues that we’re dealing with locally.”

Lambert mentioned that although this bill may not have a large local impact, he will need to review the details before discussing it further.

“I think, in general, federal legislation always out trumps state legislation, but when you’ve got let state legislation already in place, there could be some grandfathering that occurs that would not really change the dynamic of that. It might only apply to any new applications for a COPPA-type situation in one of these other seven counties that have not utilized the Coppa bill yet. So I don’t think it would have any really major effect in terms of what we’re doing here locally in terms of what, what transpired three or four years ago when one hospital acquired the other hospitals. So, again, haven’t seen the details yet, exactly what Congressman Arrington is proposing. Until I do, I think it’s probably safe for me to say, let’s wait and see exactly what his details say. Maybe we’ll talk about the implications on 3301,” Lambert said.

He said that healthcare options are important and competition is good, its not realistic in smaller communities.

“When you talk about rural health care, you’ve got to look at the numbers and the dynamics of what’s actually happening. There aren’t many people moving to the smaller communities, we’ve had over 25 rural hospitals close in the last 10 or 14 years. In Texas, we’ve got 40 or more now that are at risk of being closed. The population is not growing in those small counties, so the numbers don’t justify having a full-blown hospital operation in some of those smaller rural counties,” Lambert explained. ” Then you add on things like workforce shortages, reimbursement rates from Medicare and Medicaid, and many of those populations in smaller rural counties or aged populations are on Medicare and Medicaid. And so those hospitals when they treat those patients, they’re not getting getting reimbursed enough just to cover their cost.”

He mentioned that it’s also a workforce shortage issue, but expanding telemedicine and telehealth could be beneficial.

“I think telemedicine and telehealth if we will continue to expand and look at ways in which we can bring those types of services to the table. We could have a registered nurse living in a small rural community who could be talking to a doctor in Abilene or San Angelo or Midland or Odessa. It could provide the health care necessary for that person in that small rural community if we have telemedicine and broadband capabilities and accessibility,” Lambert shared.

He shared that another area to consider is improving broadband access and recruiting more people into healthcare.

“Broadband access and expansion is very important; telehealth/telemedicine continues to look at ways to expand that and then funding the programs that are necessary to make sure that we don’t continue with this workforce shortage in the future. To me, that’s the most important thing we can do right now: continue to invest money in grants and scholarships in ways in which we can get more of our young people to look at healthcare as a long-term career and a profession that they would be interested in going into,” Lambert said. “COVID just knocked the socks out of our workforce. We’re still trying to recover from that and it’s going to be it’s going to take some time to do that. That’s where the state can step in and that’s where the state can do more in terms of making sure that we have those that funding available.”

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