In 2006, Dr. Howard Marcus wrote that Texas’ 2003 tort reform statute sparked an “amazing turnaround” in which doctors came to Texas in droves, instead of leaving the state as they had before. He was doubly wrong. Texas neither lost doctors before 2003 nor gained them especially quickly in subsequent years. In fact, according to statistics published by the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS), the supply of active, direct patient care (DPC) doctors per capita grew faster from 1996 to 2002 than at any time after 2003. If the pre-reform growth rate had simply continued, Texas would have seven more DPC doctors per 100,000 residents than it does today.
Not only did pre-reform Texas outpace post-reform Texas; in the post-reform period Texas fell farther behind the average U.S. state. In 2002, Texas had 61 fewer DPC physicians per 100,000 residents than the average state. In 2010, Texas lagged the average state by a whopping 76.5 doctors per 100,000 residents, according to data published by the American Medical Association (AMA). Texas’ downward slide is also accelerating, meaning that Texas is falling behind the average state both farther and faster each year.
These statistics are public and well known. They can be found at TDSHS’s website and in a report Public Citizen published earlier this year. In view of this, it is shameful that Marcus, his colleagues at the Texas Alliance for Patient Access and Republican politicians continue to mislead. They are blatantly exploiting the ignorance of people who have better things to do than read up on the number of doctors in the State.
Marcus and his accomplices know about TDSHS’s numbers but have ignored them in all prior public statements I’ve found. They want to give glowing reports, so they focus on the number of new licenses granted by the Texas Medical Board (TMB) instead. TMB’s count of new licenses is misleading, however, because it ignores the number of doctors who leave the state, retire, die or stop seeing patients for other reasons. Suppose 100 calves were born into a herd of cattle that also lost 250 adult animals because of the heat and drought. The rancher who owned the herd would say he was down 150 head. Marcus and his buddies would say the herd grew by 100.
