News

The Texas Medical Association (TMA) announced it has filed a new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, challenging certain portions of the Aug. 26 final rules implementing the federal No Surprises Act (NSA). This is the second time in less than a year TMA has filed a lawsuit against federal agencies related to rulemaking under the law. At issue are the rules affecting how payment disputes are resolved in certain situations in which the patient receives care from a physician or provider who is out of the insurance plan’s network. The payment disputes occur between health insurers and physicians or providers; patients are not affected or included. TMA is arguing that the challenged provisions of the final rule deprive physicians and providers of the arbitration process the law intended.

Disclaimer: Arrest and court records are public information, and the press has the right to publish them under the first amendment of the US Constitution. It is important to note that an arrest should not be considered as evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

A Texas judge has ruled that the Texas State Bar’s lawsuit against First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster violates the separation of powers secured by the Texas Constitution. In so ruling, the judge granted the office of the Attorney General’s plea to the jurisdiction and dismissed the state bar’s meritless and politically-motivated disciplinary charges against Webster. The office of the Attorney General argued in its motion that the bar’s attempt to unduly influence the office in the exercise of its constitutional powers is not only improper, but also violates Texas law. The specially- assigned Judge John Youngblood, agreed, stating in his ruling: “[T] he separation-of-powers doctrine deprives this Court of subject-matter jurisdiction. To hold otherwise would stand for a limitation of the Attorney General’s broad power to file lawsuits on the State’s behalf, a right clearly supported by the Texas Constitution and recognized repeatedly by the Texas Supreme Court.”

In the Sept. 9, 2022, edition of The Sealy News, an article under the headline “Little Chamber that Can” carried the wrong byline.