AAPM and health care reform: your voice is needed.

The debate these days is not so much about whether health care is going to be reformed, but how.Undoubtedly, therewill be reform; the discussion now is the format in which it will materialize. With the focus onhealth care reformat the national level taking center stage, thismoment in time offers pain care practitioners the ideal opportunity to continue our push for pain care reform. There are many activities in which the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) members are providing leadership to this effort. Particularly noteworthy is the activity of our Committee for Legislative Affairs, spearheaded by Scott Fishman, MD, Chair of AAPM’s Legislative Committee and Past AAPM President, Perry Fine, MD, AAPM Treasurer, and Phil Saigh, AAPM Executive Director. Ongoing news on this subject can be found on ourWebsite at http://www.painmed.org/advocacy. Consider, for example, the National Pain Care Policy Act, an important piece of legislation that AAPM has been advancing since 1998 with its original partners, the American Pain Society (APS), the American Headache Society, and more recently, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), which joined the Pain Care Coalition (PCC) in 2004. As you may recall, the Act would authorize an Institute of Medicine conference on pain care, promote pain research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provide comprehensive pain care education and training for health care professionals, and institute a public awareness campaign on pain management. The National Pain Care Policy Act came extremely close to being passed into law in the fall of 2008; it was then reintroduced in both Houses early in 2009. It has passed the House and now sits in a Senate committee, where it will likely remain until the health care reform debate is completed. The earliest that anyone suggests that the health care reform debate will be over is late summer. Meanwhile, however, there is much that we can do to help shape the debate. AAPM continues its work to push for pain care reform. Our members can also do their part by contacting Senate committeemembers to urge that they support theNational Pain Care Policy Act. A full list of committee members is available in the Advocacy section of the AAPM Website under National Pain Care Policy Act at http://www.painmed.org/advocacy/ national_pain.html. I urge you to take a few minutes from your schedule and to let the senators know that the National Pain Care Policy Act is a lawworth supporting. Also, let LynnWebster,MD, and our State Initiative Committee know if you are interested in representingPainMedicine andAAPM in your state—these activities synergistically increase our influence on these important issues. Please let our staff know by sending them an e-mail at [email protected] when you (or your friends and relatives) send your letters of support so we can document our activity—it only takes a fewminutes, but it means a lot to ourCongress whenmany voice concern about the undertreatment of pain and the need for better training and research. In addition to our efforts with the National Pain Care Policy Act, AAPM continues to work to make pain care reform a part of the health care reform debate. Our hope is that the reform package ultimately agreed upon between the Obama administration and Congress includes a pain care reform component, consistent with the priority being given to pain medicine in the Veterans Affairs Health System (VA) and military health systems. Ideally, the package would contain those provisions called for in the National Pain Care Policy Act, thus obviating any need to get that legislation passed separately. Again, our members can also play a significant role in this debate by contacting senators and urging them to include pain care reform in the health care reform package. Please contact your senators and ask them to support these measures—and let us know you did.