There were two topics for legislative advocacy this fall:

In September I sent letters to our Senators and Representatives on behalf of APA and OPA asking them to support legislation that would prevent cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates.

In October Roseann Fish Getchell and I attended an APA Advocacy Summit. There were two days of trainings and a third day of virtual meetings with the offices for Senators Merkley and Wyden and Representatives Bonamici and Bleumeanuer. Dr. Getchell and I had very productive legislative meetings where we discussed three pieces of legislation related to student loan debt;

1. HR7761—Support of Public Loan Forgiveness for less than full time work
2. HR6720—Expansion of Public Loan Forgiveness to private loans
3. HR7449/S4141—allow students to re-finance their public and private loans at the new historically low rates

Looking ahead:

1. APA will again be reaching out to Representatives and Senators to advocate for the prevention of Medicare cuts for health care professions. I am waiting for the specific details on this legislation and will keep members updated as I have more information to share.
2. APA is preparing a formal response to Executive Order (EO) 13950 which halts many diversity training programs in federal agencies. APA strongly opposes this EO and, in addition to submitting their own response, I suspect they will reach out to us to submit comments as well.

Information on both of these issues will be forthcoming. Please stay tuned and be prepared to submit stories on how these issues impact you as a provider, business owner, recipient of services, and a constituent. As a reminder, governmental offices consistently say that personal feedback from constituents is the most important and powerful information for our congressional leaders. Your voice matters and you can make a difference.