Call Your Member of Congress
Although we have completed a successful Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill this past April 4, the AARC needs additional help from respiratory therapists, RT students, patients, caregivers, etc., to gain co-sponsorship of three new bills that have been introduced in the House of Representatives that include respiratory care as a telehealth service and respiratory therapists among the professionals covered to provide telehealth and/or remote patient monitoring services under Medicare.
If you don’t have a computer to send an email to the Hill, you can still make a difference by calling your House of Representative member during the week of July 10–14! So let your voice be heard and place those calls now. We have tips and information for calling, including the phone number for the U.S. Capitol Switchboard to ask for your Representative’s office.
Here are some talking points you can use when you make your call.
I am a respiratory therapist (or student, or pulmonary patient, etc.) and I’m from (your town and state). I’d like to ask (Representative __________) to cosponsor three new bills that include respiratory care as a telehealth service and respiratory therapists among the professionals covered to provide telehealth and/or remote patient monitoring services under Medicare. The bills are:
- H.R. 2550 — Medicare Telehealth Parity Act
- H.R. 2291 — Helping Expand Telehealth to Rural America (HEART) Act
- H.R. 766 — Telehealth for Individuals Residing in Public Housing
Respiratory therapists are not recognized as Medicare providers. Co-sponsorship of these important bills will help patients with chronic respiratory disease have access to respiratory therapists’ expertise via telehealth that can help reduce costly acute care interventions and help advance the respiratory profession.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my requests.
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