FP Report -- August 1999
Call to action
Press lawmakers to back GME changes, negotiation rights
The dog days of summer have hit, and your federal lawmakers are probably home, taking a break from their Washington work.
If so, please pay them a visit. Ask them, face to face, to support the following legislation.
GME Technical Amendments. These amendments, S. 541/H.R. 1222, would remedy problems family practice residencies have had from unintended glitches in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The Academy and other family medicine groups helped draft the bills.
The amendments, for example, would expand caps on numbers of residents from those trained in hospitals in 1996 to include those trained in community settings, most of whom were family practice residents.
Encourage your lawmakers to include the GME amendments in omnibus bills to "fix" the Balanced Budget Act. For more information, access www.aafp.org/gov/keycontacts online.
The Quality Health Care Coalition Act. This bill, H.R. 1304, would allow physicians and other health professionals to jointly negotiate the terms of contracts directly with health plans and insurers. The bill precludes strikes.
The AAFP and other medical groups support the act, and it already has 124 bipartisan cosponsors. However, at press time, representatives from these states had not yet signed on as cosponsors: Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. If you live in one of those states, ask your representative to cosponsor H.R. 1304.
If you opt to write your lawmakers instead of visit them, please send a copy of your letter to Susan Hildebrandt in AAFP's Washington office at 2021 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
FP Report | Headlines |AAFP Home | Search