UTEP Alum, Head of AMA Talks About Texas Gaining From Health Care Overhaul

Dr. J. James Rohack isn’t just the president of the influential American Medical Association, an organization that carried the torch for the health care reform bill the U.S. House of Representatives passed this week. He’s a Texan and a 1976 psychology graduate of UTEP.

Rohack is a senior staff cardiologist at Scott & White Clinic in Temple, and a professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. He’s also the former president of the Texas Medical Association, which very publicly opposed the health care legislation.

At the annual HMO Research Network Conference in Austin this week, Rohack sat down with The Texas Tribune to explain why Texas has so much to gain from the health care overhaul, what effect tort reform has had on the state’s medical costs, and what the political ramifications are for his organization’s support of the reform bill ? nationally and back home in Texas.