Get off the bench and get in the game

Do you ever wonder what your Academy is doing for you in the halls of the Legislature? This issue’s cover story will give you a good idea—it’s a play-by-play of what we’ve done and where we are this Legislative session.

We came into this session with a game plan and we have high expectations of reaching our goals. We have a strong advocacy team at the Academy and we are well received by the legislators. We have done our homework and published a document called “Fractured: The State of Health Care in Texas” that has everyone’s attention. Now the Legislature is looking to us for leadership on medical issues. We keep them educated on what’s important to us.

Our communications efforts have done a great job keeping everyone informed about what’s going on at the Capitol. You may have seen the Web-based video Capitol Report, which goes out every week in the QuickInfo, or its written counterpart, Capitol Update. These two Web news vehicles really highlight the bills important to family physicians and get the legislators on camera taking about our issues. If you missed them, be sure to check out www.tafp.org/news and click on “Capitol Update and Capitol Report archive.”

This session, I think we’re going to see improvement in key areas, namely contracting with insurance companies, Medicaid reimbursement and public health issues. The fair contracting bills present a great opportunity to fix contracting and get rid of the egregious behavior of the insurance companies. If it passes, we’ll get good, accurate information about our patients’ insurance coverage including their co-pays and deductibles.

In addition to that, we hope to see a wellness bill move forward in this Legislature and see some real positive things happening in that arena. There are some issues with obesity as well as with immunizations that we have a good chance to pass this year.

Scope of practice issues are always a problem in medicine. I’m convinced we’ll still be fighting scope of medicine problems when my grandkids are practicing medicine. In this particular session it appears that the Legislative leadership is not going to allow physician extenders to increase their scope of practice. We still have to be vigilant to make sure quality patient care is maintained. This is where you come in.

Even with our strong advocacy effort at the Academy, we wouldn’t have any influence without our members participating at the grassroots level. Sign up to be a Key Contact with the Academy and help develop legislators’ knowledge of medical issues. This grassroots participation will help us move our political agenda through the Legislature, and that means we need people out in their communities talking directly with their legislators. Give them a call, let them know what you think is important. Let them know you need better reimbursement in Medicaid. Let them know you want to be treated fairly by insurance companies. We don’t want anything unreasonable. We just want good reasonable things to happen so that you can do a better job of taking care of your patients, and they’ll listen if it comes from you.

In addition to that, we need you to contribute to the Academy’s political action committee, TAFPPAC. By being a member of TAFPPAC, we can make a difference in Texas. The money that we generate allows us to help good candidates who are sensitive to medicine’s issues. We’ll listen to you, the members of the Academy, for your input as to which candidates we should support. But to have opportunities to invest in those people, we have to have money, so we need you to be a member of TAFPPAC. If you haven’t seen the PAC video, go to www.tafp.org/tafppac and watch it. It’s fun, it’s brief and it hits on some important points. Please show it to all of your colleagues!

I want to thank all of the family physicians who volunteered to serve as Physician of the Day during the session. This important service brings the face of family medicine in front of legislators in the best way possible—by showing them that family docs are the ones taking care of Texas patients.

I really think that this year is an exceptional year for the Texas Academy. We are at a golden time and if you have an opportunity to help us with a legislator or a contact, we need that. We need to know what we can do to help you have influence with your local legislator. We need you in the game this year more than any other. It will make a difference for your patients.