U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-Dallas), who hopes to make health care a top issue in Texas’ U.S. Senate race this year, huddled with local health care experts in San Antonio Monday.
The roundtable at the North East Bexar County Democrats’ office focused on how San Antonio leaders are dealing with closing hospitals, like one that recently shuttered on the South Side, and a large uninsured population that’s growing as residents who received Medicaid during the pandemic are being removed from the rolls.
Allred said that in his district, when the Baylor Scott & White Medical Center closed several years ago, he was able to get the facility donated to the Department of Veterans Affairs so that the community wouldn’t completely lose those hospital beds.
“I know what we’re facing in North Texas very well,” said Allred, who used the meeting to learn about San Antonio-specific challenges ahead of a statewide race this November. Leaders from South Texas Allergy & Asthma Medical Professionals and the equity research nonprofit Every Texan participated in the event.
Though the 2024 election cycle has so far been dominated by immigration and border security, the NFL player-turned-civil rights lawyer sees potential in reviving a topic Democrats have had success with in the past.
Affordable Care Act
Allred is running against Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz who famously shut the government down in his crusade against the Affordable Care Act in 2013 — a time when Republicans were picking up seats over backlash to the health care law.
But Obamacare has since grown in popularity, and Cruz’s continued efforts to unravel it — by gutting its protections for people with preexisting conditions — provided Democrats with their most effective line of attack against Republicans across the country in 2018.
Cruz’s own campaign said he was hurt by 11th-hour ads suggesting he wanted to kick people off their health care, contributing to his narrow 2.6% victory over Democrat Beto O’Rourke that year.
“I find it amazing that this guy still wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, wants to go back to the days of folks having a preexisting condition being discriminated against,” Allred told the gathering Monday.
Cruz’s campaign declined to comment, but he’s spent his Easter recess campaigning on border security.
In an interview after Monday’s event, Allred said he’d “never seen an election where health care wasn’t one of the most important issues” because “it’s so personal,” and “such an ongoing issue for Texans.”
“We are in the place we’re in, as the state with the highest uninsured rate, because of policy decisions,” he said. “I think Texans are suffering under the current setup, and so to me, it’s going to be incredibly important.”
Since the last Texas Senate race, health care has only been further thrust into the spotlight by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, paving the way for Texas’ to set its own abortion restrictions, Allred said.
“We’re experiencing what a near total ban on abortion looks like,” said Allred, who chose Dr. Austin Dennard, an OBYGN who fled the state for her own abortion, to be his State of the Union guest. “What that looks like is providers being afraid to try and provide critical care.”
Personal experience
As Allred seeks to bring health care to the forefront in his race, he and his guests, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) and state Rep. Josey Garcia, all opened up about personal experiences with the health care system at Monday’s gathering.
Allred, who was raised by a single mother, said he was particularly grateful Obamacare made it so that people can’t be kicked off or denied health insurance for developing a serious illness.
“My mom had breast cancer and a mastectomy,” he said. “These are kind of things that just happen, right?”
Castro, who underwent surgery to have cancerous gastrointestinal tumors removed roughly a year ago, discussed the expensive, ongoing treatment he’s receiving that many of his constituents can’t afford.
“Two years ago I got diagnosed with cancer and had major surgery last year, [with] a 10-day stay at MD Anderson [Cancer Center in Houston],” Castro said. “Because of that I have to take, as part of that treatment, a drug every month called Lanreotide.”
Lanreotide is used to slow the growth of tumors that can’t be removed. While Castro said he’s “doing well” physically, he still has tumors in his liver and lung, but they haven’t grown in the past year and a half.
The list price for Lanreotide is $24,000 per injection, Castro said, but the negotiated price between his insurance company and the hospital is $6,500. He anticipates needing to take the drug for the rest of his life.
“There are so many people that either are underinsured… or they’re completely uninsured, who I know don’t get the full treatment they need,” he said. “We can change that.”
Texas’ GOP leaders have expressed no interest in joining the 41 states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which uses federal money to reimburse states for much of the cost of enrolling people who couldn’t otherwise afford health care.
Garcia, who has twin adult sons on the autism spectrum, called that reality one of the most disappointing parts of her first legislative session last year.
“For us the fear of what life is going to be like for them as young adults with an intellectual disability, it’s a heartbreaking and very stressful and, sometimes, very bleak, outlook,” she said.
