This column by TAB CEO Glenn Hamer was published by San Antonio Express-News. Photo by Kim Brent / The Enterprise
We want to thank our lawmakers for standing up for local businesses during their regular legislative session and helping keep Texas’ workforce strong.
This session, lawmakers were asked to juggle a number of competing priorities meant to halt rising inflation, strengthen our economy and address small-business concerns. Buried among these proposals were controversial bills that would have been detrimental to the health of Texas businesses and, even more importantly, the health of our employees and their families across the state.
Legislation filed in both chambers proposed heavy-handed government mandates that would have changed existing guidelines to restrict the way employers can offer tailored health coverage to employees and their families, including prescription drug benefits. If passed, these bills would have increased the cost of health care by millions of dollars for job creators and hardworking Texans.
Thankfully, our legislators saw the proposals for what they truly were — a threat not only to accessible and affordable health care and prescription drugs but also to the freedom of business leaders to make decisions about their business and keep the government out of their relationship with their employees. They stopped the bills from becoming law, and for that, we are grateful.
But the fight isn’t over. While several detrimental bills didn’t move forward this year, without action and the continued leadership of pro-business legislators, they could come up again in 2025. Ask any business leader in your community, and they’ll tell you: Rising health care costs are a top concern. We need our legislators to develop targeted strategies to tackle escalating costs before they affect our businesses, employees and local economies any further.
Lawmakers must stand strong and ensure the Texas business community maintains the right to offer hardworking employees the health care coverage they need at a cost they can afford. We need to make sure future bills that attempt to restrict and undermine businesses’ health plan offerings are swiftly and efficiently stopped before they threaten the ability of small businesses to grow and thrive or drive up costs at the pharmacy for our employees and patients across the state.
We look forward to working with lawmakers to make Texas the best state to start and grow a business.
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