AAFP Political Action Committee Sets Rapid Pace in 2008

FamMedPAC, the AAFP's federal political action committee, has raised more than $230,000 since Jan. 1 of this year, far more than the amounts raised during the first four months of 2006 and 2007, respectively.

The average FamMedPAC contribution now stands at $299, according to Mark Cribben, J.D., director of FamMedPAC. If that pace continues, the political action committee will have raised more than $700,000 by the end of the current election cycle. That amount would easily surpass the totals raised in previous years and put the PAC directly on course to become the nation's largest medical political action committee.

"Our membership is making a statement -- members are telling us this is very, very important to them," said FamMedPAC Board Chair Michael Fleming, M.D., of Shreveport, La.

FamMedPAC launched in May 2005, and during the past two-and-a-half years, the PAC has enjoyed explosive growth, contributing more than $750,000 to sitting members of Congress, as well as to candidates vying for House and Senate seats.

The PAC's success has opened doors for family medicine, enabling the AAFP to present its issues and concerns directly to federal lawmakers and putting the Academy in a position to "drive policy," said Fleming, a past president of the AAFP.

"If you have face time with an actual member of Congress, it makes a lot of difference," explained Fleming. "For example, we talk about the importance of funding for graduate medical education, and to be able to sit at the table with a member during breakfast or lunch or dinner and have that member's attention when you talk about issues like GME -- that changes everything."

Cribben describes the PAC as "another avenue for us to promote our agenda and reach the people we need to reach."

"It affords us opportunities we did not have and could not have had before without a PAC," Cribben said. "We are now part of every health care discussion going on in Washington because of the PAC."

And that's critical, according to Fleming, when you're in a business -- as physicians are -- that is heavily influenced by what happens in Congress. As he put it: "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu."