Health & Wellbeing

The 2019 session of the Texas Legislature resulted in passage of bills that AARP Texas is calling on Governor Greg Abbott to sign into law to improve the wellbeing of older Texans and other consumers.

As the 2021 Texas legislative session nears its finish, AARP Texas applauds state lawmakers who championed meaningful bills that seek to increase consumer protection, improve healthcare and promote financial resilience.

Texans have reason to cheer a significant act of progress out of the legislative session. Late Tuesday, Governor Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 507, which bolsters patient protections against surprise medical billing.

Approaching the end of the 2019 Texas legislative session, AARP Texas leaders are applauding lawmakers on their successful work for older Texans and other consumers.

Telemedicine – or telehealth – could soon take firmer hold in Texas under legislation recently sent to the governor that would help patients meet with physicians via smartphone, tablet or computer.

Stress – or the body’s response to any demand – may not be all that bad in small doses. It can help us get through a short-term crisis, such as the first few days of a pandemic. But chronic stress -- the ongoing kind, such as weeks’-long interruptions to our normal rhythms due to the coronavirus outbreak -- is the stuff that can be a mental killer.

Texas lawmakers today finalized a measure that gives important new rights to millions of unpaid family caregivers. A priority for AARP, House Bill 2425 (companion to Senate Bill 1417) would help Texans when their loved ones go into the hospital and as they transition home. The legislation goes next to the governor’s desk.

AARP Texas Director Bob Jackson today praised the Legislature’s final passage of House Bill 3276. Filed by Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, HB 3276 would help protect consumers from surprise medical bills at freestanding emergency rooms. Earlier today, the Texas Senate approved the measure, sending it to the governor’s desk. Jackson said:

In Texas alone, there are more than 3.4 million unpaid family caregivers, many of whom provide complex medical and nursing tasks for their loved ones, and sometimes without adequate explanation or training. It’s not unusual for their tasks to include managing multiple medications, providing wound care, overseeing special diets, and operating high-tech medical equipment and monitors.

With the scheduled end of the 2017 Texas legislative session approaching, AARP continues to fight for passage of several bills that aim to improve nursing home quality, ease the stress of family caregivers, protect older Texans from financial exploitation, and help consumers avoid and respond to surprise medical charges.