<\/p>\n
Texas Attorney General, and U.S. Senate candidate, Ken Paxton waves to supporters during a primary election night watch party on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Smiley N. Pool\/Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
Have you heard the good news?\u00a0After years of allowing a large hospital system to abuse its power to keep prices high and block insurance companies from offering lower cost, high quality options, the state attorney general finally stood up for patients and filed an anti-trust lawsuit<\/a> in February. The U.S. Department of Justice signed on, too. It couldn\u2019t come at a more critical moment. Since 2000,\u00a0hospital prices<\/a> have increased three times faster than inflation and twice as fast as wage growth<\/p>\n \u201cWhen competition is blocked, consumers end up being the biggest losers. My office stands with the Justice Department in our determination to eliminate these types of unfair practices,\u201d the attorney general said at the time.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, that\u2019s not really good news for Texans. Because that was Ohio Attorney General Dave\u00a0Yost, not our guy, Ken Paxton. No, Paxton\u2019s busy settling important lawsuits against Texas Children\u2019s Hospital for providing gender-affirming healthcare to children (whose parents consented).\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In Ohio, the attorney general makes sure everyday patients aren\u2019t being ripped off while seeking critical care. In Texas, we get more culture wars.<\/p>\n And bizarre niche battles like\u00a0Paxton\u2019s crusade against Tylenol<\/a> and children’s toothpaste<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s too bad. Because lowering healthcare prices is the most important issue for Texas voters, according to\u00a0polling by Texas 2036<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead of addressing prices,\u00a0Paxton is targeting a small percent of a small percent of people. As part of the settlement<\/a> with Texas Children\u2019s, he is requiring the hospital to fire \u201cfive woke doctors\u201d and open a first-of-its-kind \u201cdetransition clinic.\u201d Paxton touted the settlement as historic, saying it \u201creflects an institutional and fundamental cultural shift away from radical \u2018gender\u2019 ideology.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Sorry if your emergency room visit bankrupts you, but at least we\u2019re protected from radical gender ideology?<\/p>\n What do we have to do to get an attorney general like Yost? Ohio is a red state, too. There, the Trump administration heartily signed on \u201cto protect consumers and drive down healthcare costs across America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Can that include Texas? Maybe?<\/p>\n Texas Children\u2019s, meanwhile, maintained that it hadn\u2019t broken any laws. But it had its own\u00a0reasons to end the<\/a> lawsuit: \u201cTo be clear \u2013 we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation. This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike\u00a0Paxton apparently, hospitals do actually have important stuff to do. Like treating kids with cancer and saving premature babies.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Fortunately, Texas has other politicians capable of leading reform. Just this week, Republican Rep. James Frank actually\u00a0filed a class action lawsuit<\/a> against Blue Cross Blue Shield, alleging that the company misrepresented costs and effectively overcharged patients. Frank has also been leading the new House Select Committee on Health Care Affordability<\/a>. It has been refreshing to watch lawmakers meet and seriously discuss the systemic causes of ballooning healthcare costs during the legislative interim. Last session, a couple of bills<\/a> that would\u2019ve made hospital consolidations more transparent and easier for the state to challenge failed. Hopefully, those efforts can be revived next session.<\/p>\n In a market as twisted up as our healthcare system, the state absolutely has a role in making sure we have actual competition working on behalf of everyday Texans seeking care. And there seems to be growing bipartisan consensus around this. Up in Washington, even folks as far apart as Reps. Chip Roy and Alexandria\u00a0Ocasio-Cortez are getting tough about the root causes of unaffordable healthcare<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Paxton keeps his focus on trans issues. Maybe our state\u2019s next attorney general will care about making healthcare affordable for everyday Texans.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n No Texan should have reason to be jealous of Ohio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Attorney General, and U.S. Senate candidate, Ken Paxton waves to supporters during a primary election night watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-295781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}