What Happened When College Students Sat Down to Fix Texas Healthcare

Builders holds Community Conversation on healthcare at University of Texas at Austin before bringing citizen-led policies to state legislature

By Alex Buscemi, Editorial Manager at Builders

Last Wednesday evening, Builders held a Community Conversation at the University of Texas at Austin, where young people from across the political spectrum sat in a room to do something their generation is told, constantly, that it can't: talk about a hard, divisive issue and actually get somewhere. The issue was healthcare: what's making it so expensive and so hard to access in Texas, and what could realistically be done about it. And the two people leading the conversation were, on paper, an unlikely duo.

John Rickert is a 20-year-old progressive on the premed track. Davrien Lambert, also 20, is a Christian conservative and a member of Turning Point USA, the organization co-founded by the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The kind of pairing the internet would expect to end in a shouting match. It didn't. 

The two met through Builders’ Citizen Solutions, a program that gathered 14 politically and geographically diverse Texans for a three-day session on state healthcare. John had expected Davrien to be "a hardliner who wasn't willing to have any introspection," the kind of Republican he'd only seen online "hurling insults at the other side." But over dinner after the second day, the whole group went out, and John and Davrien ended up huddled in a corner, trading views on politics, current events, their upbringings, everything. They walked away as real friends, and that friendship is what they brought to the front of the room at UT.

The policies they came to discuss all grew out of that original Citizen Solutions gathering. Ideas built to be things Texans across the political spectrum could get behind. They address predatory billing practices like surprise facility fees tacked onto telehealth visits where no physical facility was ever used. They want to hold tax-exempt nonprofit hospitals accountable by requiring them to tell patients about financial assistance programs up front, rather than sending eligible people to debt collectors who never knew help was available. 

Our Community Conversations are a way for citizens to ask questions and provide input before the policies are carried to the Texas Legislature and, hopefully, brought to the floor for a vote. 

Most students at the event hope to go into medicine, and for them, the night was eye-opening. 

Nicole Wu, a 20-year-old premed junior, pointed out that the curricula of students training to become doctors tend to focus on the science, “but it’s also important to learn what shapes the healthcare system and how patients access and afford care.”

Soleil Patterson, a 20-year-old junior, admitted she didn't know much about the policies going in, and one number stopped her cold: the 532% increase in hospital facility fees between 2004 and 2024 — care marked up enormously for the overhead of a building that sometimes isn't even used. "That facility statistic actually sent me. I was like, this is insane,” she said, adding, “It's great to hear how we agree on more things than we thought.”

Tammy, a 20-year-old Sophomore at UT, said social media and extremism on both sides have made honest dialogue harder than it used to be. "Today you have to be really intentional about setting up these conversations. It's not like 20 years ago where you could casually talk to people who disagree with you. Things like Builders really do encourage that dialogue." 

And that’s exactly what we’re betting on with our Community Conversations. John hopes the students walked away with the belief that real change is possible. After a steady diet of stories about how broken everything is, he said, these students got to stand in a room with people genuinely working toward something better. "These are my classmates. These are my peers. We sit in the same lecture, we hang out in the same areas. And if they see that someone the exact same as them is fighting and taking action to make the world better, they can see that they can do it as well."

Hey, Texans, want to join our next Community Conversation?

Local citizen leaders will discuss access to primary and mental healthcare, price transparency and unfair billing practices, and hospital accountability. 

Date: Saturday, October 24
Time: 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Location: CoPlay Cove, 2106 E Sonterra BIvd Ste 105, San Antonio, TX

All are welcome. RSVP here. 

Can't make it? Don't live near Houston? Tell us more about yourself right here — we'll keep you updated on Builders events happening near you.