AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (AMA)
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/advocacy/current-topics-advocacy.shtml
The AMA is dedicated to reforming the nation’s health care system in a way that provides quality, affordable health care for all.
AMERICAN MEDICAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION (AMSA)
http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Homepage/About/Priorities/HCFA/AMSAonHCR.aspx
The American Medical Student Association believes that the best solution to our health care crisis is a single-payer system of publicly funded, publicly accountable, privately provided, quality health care for all.
AMSA considers the following essential to health care reform:
A single, federally administered public insurance option that provides uniform benefits across the US, enacted concurrently with other provisions of health care reform and available to individuals and employers widely. The public plan must be allowed to set premiums and payment structure in negotiations with stakeholders, independent of other insurance plans, but subject to all federal insurance requirements.
Insurance for all through a requirement that all insurers, public and private, to (1) guarantee issue of insurance to all; (2) set premiums by community rating, without regard to health status; (3) offer comprehensive benefits packages that meet a common actuarial standard; and (4) not institute annual or lifetime caps on benefits.
AMERICAN NURSES ASSOCIATION (ANA)
http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/HealthcareandPolicyIssues/
The ANA believes that a system focused on primary care, prevention and chronic disease management can alleviate much of the expensive acute care that currently takes its toll in human suffering, as well as dollars. It is a worthwhile national investment. And nursing’s strengths as a profession -- in providing holistic care that contemplates the individual, his or her family and community -- is exactly the emphasis sought in a reformed health care system.
The ANA’s reform agenda is based on the following:
Health care is a basic human right. ANA supports a restructured health care system that ensures universal access to a standard package of essential health care services for all citizens and residents.
Health policies should be based on the six Institute of Medicine (IOM) aims (safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable) and are based on outcomes research will ultimately save money.
The system must be reshaped and redirected away from the overuse of expensive, technology-driven, acute, hospital-based services in the model we now have, to one in which a balance is struck between high-tech treatment and community-based and preventive services, with emphasis on the latter. The solution is to invert the pyramid of priorities and focus more on primary care, thus ultimately requiring less costly secondary and tertiary care.
A single-payer mechanism as the most desirable option for financing a reformed health care system.
AMERICAN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY ASSOCIATION (AOTA)
http://www.aota.org/Practitioners/Advocacy/Federal/Reform09.aspx
The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) agrees with the growing consensus that there is a need for reform in the American health care system to address problems including coverage for the uninsured, access to care, quality, cost growth, and workforce shortages.
Protect and Strengthen Medicare and Medicaid: AOTA is concerned that health reform is being financed by cuts to Medicare, specifically to skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies. AOTA supports the extension of the exceptions process for the Medicare Outpatient Therapy Caps and Congress’s intent to address the problem of the scheduled 20% cut to the physician fee schedule. AOTA also supports expansion of Medicare to 133% of poverty and the extension of EPSDT mandates to all children covered under the proposed exchange plans.
Ensure Access to Rehabilitation Services: Rehabilitation and habilitation services must be a specific required category of services under the proposed exchange as currently included in the House and HELP Committee bills. AOTA stands with the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) to call for the explicit inclusion of rehabilitation, habilitation and related devices in the final health care reform bill.
Improve Home Health Services for Medicare Beneficiaries: AOTA has long been working to improve access to occupational therapy for Medicare home health beneficiaries. We are working to include the intent of the Medicare Home Health Flexibility Act (HR 1094) in the final health reform bill. The cost neutral, bi-partisan provision would allow occupational therapists to open cases and conduct the initial and comprehensive assessment for Medicare home health beneficiaries when occupational therapy is on the physician’s order with a qualifying service.
Address Health Care Workforce Needs: AOTA recognizes the strain expanded coverage will have on the health care workforce, particularly for professions like occupational therapy that have existing shortages. AOTA supports the inclusion of programs like those for “frontline” health providers that specifically reference occupational therapist and occupational therapy assistants as key professions within the health and mental health workforce.
AMERICAN PHARMACISTS ASSOCIATION (APhA)
The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) has not taken a position on any of the current proposals and does not plan to take any position on the comprehensive bills. There are too many elements of each proposal for which we do not have policy, such as how to expand access (e.g., public option, employer mandate) and how to fund expanded access. Instead, APhA has and will continue to focus its advocacy efforts on the areas that are directly relevant to the practice of pharmacy and the patients that the profession serves.
Include Pharmacists as Part of Integrated Care Models. The health care system must take advantage of the specialized knowledge and skills of all professionals working as part of a care team. The incorporation of pharmacists’ clinical services is necessary given the nearly universal role of medications in the care of patients with both chronic and acute disease.
Include Pharmacists in Payments for Transitional Care Activities. Pharmacists are medication experts and one of the most readily accessible providers. Medication use is a top reason for hospital readmissions. Pharmacists on the transitional care team can play a major role in preventing these events, as patients are discharged from the hospital or transferred from one care setting to another.
Provide Medication Therapy Management Services. All health plans must provide a comprehensive pharmacy benefit that covers both medications and pharmacist services that ensure that the use of those medications is fully optimized and that therapeutic outcomes are achieved.
Conduct a Medication Therapy Management Pilot. As CMS and/or AHRQ are given additional authority and direction to conduct pilot projects, legislative proposals should ensure that the clinical role of pharmacists is an element of at least one project.
Include Pharmacists in Workforce Strategies. To assure that all Americans have access to the services of well-educated and trained pharmacists competent to meet specific health care needs of patients, legislative proposals must establish and finance a comprehensive federal health professions workforce strategy that includes pharmacists and schools of pharmacy.
AMERICAN PHYSICAL THERAPY ASSOCIATION (APTA)
http://capwiz.com/amerpta/issues/alert/?alertid=13616091
APTA’s recommendations for health care reform are focused on provision of comprehensive and high-quality care, documented cost savings, and appropriate utilization of physical therapist services. As rehabilitation care providers for patients with functional impairments, physical therapists can and should play a major role in achieving the clinical effectiveness and cost efficiencies that are so critical to comprehensive health care reform.
• Ensure that rehabilitation services are an essential element of a standard benefits package in any proposal to reform the insurance delivery system and provided by licensed health care professionals.
• Eliminate existing payment policies that impede patient access to cost-effective outpatient rehabilitation services provided by physical therapists -- before authorizing new policies.
• Enhance initiatives to develop a national strategy that will ensure that an adequate health care workforce exists to meet the needs of patients.
• Include policies to reduce regulatory burdens on physical therapists in order to help them be more efficient and effective in delivering health care to their patients at the right time and place, including addressing physician self-referral.
AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION (APHA)
Support population-based programs that deliver resources to the whole community and are proven to realize a more positive health impact than do individual interventions alone. These programs can target root causes of disease, disability and health disparities and can help achieve increased value for our health dollar. Additionally, we must ensure coverage for quality, affordable health care for all. This means covering the over 46 million uninsured, and improving the quality and safety of the health care system, including building a modern health information infrastructure. It is critical that the final bill sent to the president contains the strongest possible public health and prevention provisions to improve the health of the American people and moves us closer to providing comprehensive and affordable health coverage for all.
Expand health insurance coverage to the highest number of uninsured as possible. CBO has estimated that the House-passed bill would provide additional coverage to 36 million individuals and the Senate-passed bill would provide additional coverage to 31 million individuals;
Dedicated funding streams for prevention and public health programs and activities as created by both the House and Senate bills. We urge you to included the House-passed level of funding for these critical activities and to ensure that this funding supplements and does not supplant current funding for prevention and public health;
Adequate subsidies for purchasing health insurance, especially for those at the lowest income levels as proposed in the House-passed bill;
Competition and consumer choice by providing individuals with the choice of a public option through a national exchange for their insurance coverage as provided in the House-passed bill;
Maintain the strong workforce planning, diversity, capacity building, nursing, dentistry, and primary care provisions currently included in the bills passed by the House and Senate that would expand and strengthen the public health and primary care workforce;
Maintain the data collection and effective strategies to reduce health disparities that are included in the bills passed by the House and Senate;
Eliminate the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole" as provided in the House-passed bill;
Strengthen and ensure the independence of the Community Preventive Services Task Force and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.