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Health Care for All Texas
Website: http://www.healthcareforalltexas.org/
Media Contacts
Leonard A. Zwelling, MD, MBA
713-859-8714
lzwellin@mdanderson.org
Dr. Zwelling is a Special Assistant to the Senior Vice President of Business Affairs and a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He was previously the Vice Presidnet for Research Administration at M. D. Anderson and is currently an active member in PNHP, The Metropolitan Organization, The Harris County Health Alliance, Doctors for Change and a member of the American Leadership Forum’s Med Class 2. He is a board certified internist and medical oncologist and a lab-based investigator. His primary interests in health policy are advancing the single payer system and improving access to life-saving clinical cancer trials.
Stephen K. Chao, MD
info@pnhp.org
Dr. Stephen Chao is a family physician at Legacy Community Health Services, a federally qualified health center in Houston. He is also a clinical assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and was previously on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine.
Born and raised in Houston, Dr. Chao attended Rice University, graduating with degrees in Biochemistry and Health Policy. He received his medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He completed his family medicine residency training at UT Health San Antonio and is committed to caring for the underserved residents of Houston and Harris County. His interests include care for immigrant and refugee populations, community health, and public policy.
Dr. Chao is a national board member of Physicians for a National Health Program and vice president of Health Care for All Texas. He also serves or has served on the boards of Refugee Services of Texas-Houston, OCA-Greater Houston, Eastside Promotoras de la Buena Salud, San Antonio Healthcare-NOW Coalition, and Doctors for Change. He is past president of the Chinese American Doctors Association of Houston.
James E. Alexander Jr., MD, FACS
817.645.4787
jealexjr@aol.com
Dr. Jim Alexander graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, board certified as a general surgeon by the American Board of Surgery, Board certified by the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians (ABQAURP), and is a 1996 graduate of the InterMountain Health Care Advanced Training Program in Health Care Delivery Improvement. He is a Captain (O-6), United States Naval Reserve, Retired.
Dr. Alexander has been a healthcare issues consultant with HCM since January, 2002.
He served for 5 years (1997 - 2002) as the Medicare Medical Director for the Texas Medicare program. In this full-time position he was responsible for the following: formulation of Medicare local medical policy for Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico Medicare Part A and Texas Medicare Part B. For more than 3 years prior to the above position Dr. Alexander was Associate Medicare Medical Director and additionally performed Associate Medical Director duties for the commercial health insurance division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. Prior to assuming these administrative medicine duties, he practiced clinical medicine and surgery as a general surgeon in the U.S. Navy for 7 years and in a private practice multi-specialty group for over 10 years.
Byron C. Tucker, MD
byronctucker@mac.com
Dr. Tucker is a psychiatrist who currently works at the Bexar County Detention Center in San Antonio. He received his medical degree at UTHSC in San Antonio. After his internship he completed two years of psychiatric residency training in San Mateo, California and finished his training in San Diego at UCSD. He has worked in state hospitals in three states including Texas, Georgia, and Colorado. Dr. Tucker has also practiced in community mental health clinics in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and in San Antonio at the Center for Health Care Services. He has been a member of Physicians for a National Health Program for eight years
State Organizations Endorsing HR676
- Health Care for All Texas
Local Unions Endorsing HR676
- Texas AFL-CIO
- Austin Central Labor Council, Austin, Texas
- El Paso Central Labor Council, El Paso, Texas
- San Antonio Central Labor Council, San Antonio, Texas
- Texas Building Trades Council
- Local 6186, Texas State Employees Union/Communications Workers of America (TSEU/CWA)
- Texas Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA)
- Retirees Club of Local 848, United Auto Workers (UAW), Grand Prairie, TX
- Smith County Central Labor Council, Tyler, TX
Texas State News
By Herbert Keyser, M.D. | San Antonio Express News, May 5, 2018
We are told “we can’t afford a single-payer system.” The real truth is that we spend so much per person for health care, that just spending the same amount in a single-payer system we can provide better care than any of the other countries of the world.
By Sue Sturgis | Facing South, July 12, 2017
As congressional Republicans try to pass an unpopular plan that would roll back the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and cause an estimated 22 million Americans to lose their health insurance, a House bill to expand the publicly-funded Medicare program from just senior citizens to every American is picking up record support — and not just among the usual progressive suspects but also from conservative Southern Democrats.
By Sabriya Rice | The Dallas Morning News, Aug. 24, 2016
The idea that health care coverage has been adequately addressed by the Affordable Care Act "is really a fallacy," says Dr. Leonard Zwelling. He's a retired oncologist in Houston and member of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that has long advocated for health care to be a basic right.
By Chris Tomlinson | Houston Chronicle
A single-payer system where all Americans pay into a national health insurance program, like Medicare, would make a huge difference. A single-payer would reduce the ability of providers to gouge prices, while setting national standards for care. It would also dramatically reduce administrative costs.
By Carrie Feibel | Houston Public Media
The Affordable Care Act has been a target of Republican opposition for years now. But there are also many left-leaning Americans who don’t like the law because they feel it doesn’t do enough.
By Christine Adams, Ph.D. | Houston Chronicle
A Medicare buy-in, as sensible as it sounds, won't work because it would merely add one more player into our inefficient, dysfunctional, fragmented, multi-payer system of financing health care.
By Jenny Deam | Houston Chronicle
Dr. Robert Zarr, president of the Physicians for a National Health Program organization in Washington, D.C., was in Houston this week speaking to physicians and medical students at Baylor College of Medicine, promoting the idea of a single-payer system of health care in this country.
By Christine Adams | Health Care for All Texas
Thanks to Medicare, about 3 million Texans receive guaranteed health care benefits regardless of their medical condition or income.
By Kathleen Duncan | Houston Chronicle
Our country needs a national health program; insurance companies do not need to profit off of our suffering.
By Jenny Deam | The Houston Chronicle
Not only do the vast majority of Texans think having insurance is important for them and their families, seven in 10 also want health coverage for everyone else. And they are willing to dig into their pockets to pay for it.
By Jerry Frankel, M.D. | The Dallas Morning News
Having spent a good part of my training at public hospitals and the last four years of my career as a faculty member of an excellent public hospital in Houston, I can say the medical personnel are amongst the most dedicated professionals I have ever met, dealing with the sickest patient population and insufficient resources, especially compared with the resources available to treat patients in private practice.
By Jack Bernard and Barbara Carr | Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News
Supreme Court finds “Medicare For All!” constitutional.
By Leonard A. Zwelling, M.D. | The Wall Street Journal
There could be no better argument for some sort of universal health-care system than Dr. Kessler’s op-ed ("The coming Obamacare shock," April 30). The current system of health-care delivery, even if or after ObamaCare is fully implemented, denies access to millions, remains highly variable in quality and still costs too much because it is driven by the vast profits of mostly nonproviders within the health-care industrial complex.
By Margaret A. Nosek | Houston Chronicle
With all the commotion surrounding the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it would be easy to overlook an important birthday: Today is the 47th anniversary of Medicare, the public health insurance program that covers our nation's seniors and people with severe disabilities.
By Christine Adams, Ph.D. | Houston Chronicle, Letters
Regarding "Decision affirms division" (Page A1, Friday), the Supreme Court's ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not solve our health care crisis. ACA does provide mild but temporary relief for many Americans (allowing children to remain on parents' health insurance until age 26; eliminating pre-existing conditions exclusions, etc.).
By Single Payer News
Hope Sanford, a spokesperson for Houston United/Unido, reports that her coalition of 16 union and community organizations has endorsed H.R. 676, “because we believe that health care for everyone in the U.S., regardless of citizenship or employment status, ensures a better quality of life for us all and greatly reduces the well-documented ill effects of economic disparity within a nation.”
By CHRISTINE ADAMS | Houston Chronicle
Today marks the 45th birthday of Medicare, the public insurance program that guarantees basic medical coverage to all seniors and people with severe disabilities regardless of their income, health status or where they live.
So paraphrasing Mayor Annise Parker of Houston, the greater health care needs of the retirees made it important to restructure their premiums to make them even more unaffordable.
By ANA M. MALINOW, MD | Houston Chronicle
The more I listen, the more I hear that all Americans want a health care system that is affordable, accountable, accessible, comprehensive, universal and just -- not another Band-Aid that will condemn thousands of us to unnecessary pain, suffering, bankruptcy and death. Listen for yourself, and you will hear Americans clamoring for true health care reform.
By DR. ANA MALINOW | Houston Chronicle
Texans had little to cheer about in the recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau that the number of Americans without health insurance dipped slightly in 2007. Instead of the 47 million uninsured in 2006, last year our nation had "only" 45.7 million who lacked health insurance, a drop of a half percentage point from 2006 (from 15.8 percent of the population to 15.3 percent). Most of the dip was due to an expansion of government programs like Medicaid, especially among children.
Dr. Daniel D. Bennett | Austin American-Statesman
If you did not already believe that our current health care financing system is rigged to benefit insurance companies over patients, then President Bush's recent veto of legislation to halt Medicare cuts to physicians should have changed your mind.