- Joined
- Aug 9, 2007
- Messages
- 817
- Reaction score
- 8
An email from SUNY:
"BACKGROUND: The Senate is now debating and considering amendments to its version of national health care reform legislation. The bill seeks to expand health insurance coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans at a cost of $850 billion.
It's clear that there are improvements that need to be made to the Senate bill. It's also clear that groups opposed to Optometry - especially insurers and organized medicine - are more active than ever on Capitol Hill pushing their own priorities which seek to restrict access to optometric care and limit the type of care optometrists provide. That's why it's essential that ODs, students and patients take action to help ensure that Optometry will be treated fairly under any health care legislation that advances in Congress, particularly with regard to patient access, re-imbursement and full recognition in Federal health programs.
Last month, at the urging of the AOA, the U.S. House approved AOA-backed Ross Amendment (to ensure non-pre-emption of state patient protection / provider non-discrimination laws) and the AOA-backed Schakowsky Amendment (to recognize ODs as physicians in Medicaid). These were notable wins for the profession, but with a House-Senate conference that will produce a final health care bill still to come, likely in January, they are not yet final victories.
LATEST DEVELOPMENT: In spite of an aggressive lobbying campaign by the insurance industry earlier this year, the Senate's current bill, developed by Majority Leader Harry Reid, includes AOA-backed language that would make provider non-discrimination safeguards a key element of reform. Now, a national coalition of medical and surgery groups has mobilized and is actively working to strip this provision before a final Senate vote, likely before the end of this month. Over the last few days, these nineteen groups, which claiming to represent more than 240,000 surgeons and anesthesiologists from across the country, have formally joined together to contact Senator Reid and other Senate leaders to state their specific opposition to the provider non-discrimination safeguards in the bill and demand its removal. They claim that "[t]he so-called non-discrimination in health care provision...would create patient confusion over greatly differing levels of education, skills and training among health care professionals while inappropriately interjecting civil rights concepts into state scope of practice laws."
The AOA, with the involvement of individual ODs, students and patients from across the country, has worked - successfully, to this point - to overcome this type of opposition to make provider non-discrimination (that is, protections in the law to prevent insurers from restricting patient choice and access) a top priority in the Washington, DC debate over health care. With the endgame underway, every OD must step up to counter all the late and dishonest misinformation we can expect from organized medicine and insurers. At this critical moment, Optometry must speak out in support of its priorities with a unified and resolute voice."
So, for those of you more versed in the situation, a few questions:
1) I was under the impression that the AOA was simply asking to be INCLUDED in the verbiage of the bill, which would keep the national scope of practice to what it currently is. Is this incorrect? Is the AOA trying to use this bill to expand the current scope of practice for optometrists?
2) About the bolded part, are they saying that the so-called "confusion" would stem from ODs being labeled as physicians? Are dentists considered physicians? If so, they have the same "level of education" as ODs. Not to mention, with this bill or without it, nothing an OD does will require an anesthesiologist-- we would still have to refer out any surgical procedures... so why are they also "represented" in that category? An OMD isn't going to have an anesthesiologist on staff while performing any of the procedures that we deserve access to, so I don't understand how it even affects them.
3) Realistically, what can students do at this point other than sending out a couple letters to Senators?
"BACKGROUND: The Senate is now debating and considering amendments to its version of national health care reform legislation. The bill seeks to expand health insurance coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans at a cost of $850 billion.
It's clear that there are improvements that need to be made to the Senate bill. It's also clear that groups opposed to Optometry - especially insurers and organized medicine - are more active than ever on Capitol Hill pushing their own priorities which seek to restrict access to optometric care and limit the type of care optometrists provide. That's why it's essential that ODs, students and patients take action to help ensure that Optometry will be treated fairly under any health care legislation that advances in Congress, particularly with regard to patient access, re-imbursement and full recognition in Federal health programs.
Last month, at the urging of the AOA, the U.S. House approved AOA-backed Ross Amendment (to ensure non-pre-emption of state patient protection / provider non-discrimination laws) and the AOA-backed Schakowsky Amendment (to recognize ODs as physicians in Medicaid). These were notable wins for the profession, but with a House-Senate conference that will produce a final health care bill still to come, likely in January, they are not yet final victories.
LATEST DEVELOPMENT: In spite of an aggressive lobbying campaign by the insurance industry earlier this year, the Senate's current bill, developed by Majority Leader Harry Reid, includes AOA-backed language that would make provider non-discrimination safeguards a key element of reform. Now, a national coalition of medical and surgery groups has mobilized and is actively working to strip this provision before a final Senate vote, likely before the end of this month. Over the last few days, these nineteen groups, which claiming to represent more than 240,000 surgeons and anesthesiologists from across the country, have formally joined together to contact Senator Reid and other Senate leaders to state their specific opposition to the provider non-discrimination safeguards in the bill and demand its removal. They claim that "[t]he so-called non-discrimination in health care provision...would create patient confusion over greatly differing levels of education, skills and training among health care professionals while inappropriately interjecting civil rights concepts into state scope of practice laws."
The AOA, with the involvement of individual ODs, students and patients from across the country, has worked - successfully, to this point - to overcome this type of opposition to make provider non-discrimination (that is, protections in the law to prevent insurers from restricting patient choice and access) a top priority in the Washington, DC debate over health care. With the endgame underway, every OD must step up to counter all the late and dishonest misinformation we can expect from organized medicine and insurers. At this critical moment, Optometry must speak out in support of its priorities with a unified and resolute voice."
So, for those of you more versed in the situation, a few questions:
1) I was under the impression that the AOA was simply asking to be INCLUDED in the verbiage of the bill, which would keep the national scope of practice to what it currently is. Is this incorrect? Is the AOA trying to use this bill to expand the current scope of practice for optometrists?
2) About the bolded part, are they saying that the so-called "confusion" would stem from ODs being labeled as physicians? Are dentists considered physicians? If so, they have the same "level of education" as ODs. Not to mention, with this bill or without it, nothing an OD does will require an anesthesiologist-- we would still have to refer out any surgical procedures... so why are they also "represented" in that category? An OMD isn't going to have an anesthesiologist on staff while performing any of the procedures that we deserve access to, so I don't understand how it even affects them.
3) Realistically, what can students do at this point other than sending out a couple letters to Senators?