During our visit we heard about a bill sponsored by Congressman and emergency medicine physician Louis Heck (R-NV) and Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), who have proposed to permanently fix the SGR by using the money that was previously budgeted for use in Iraq and Afghanistan but was never spent.1 As ACR board member Gary Firestein, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego, quipped: “It’s like using virtual money to pay off a virtual deficit.” Although some members of Congress have signed on as cosponsors of the bill, its passage is far from certain. The word we heard on the Hill was that many members from both sides of the aisle wanted to see real dollars removed from other parts of the budget to offset the cost of the fix.
So What’s a Rheumatologist?
Though the SGR itself is based on a flawed calculus, it is apparent that correcting these types of errors often requires more than an “act of Congress.” This simple reality drove home the most important point of our day on Capitol Hill: if constituents want to have any impact on the drafting of legislation, they need to have their voices heard prior to the passage of the bill. As Lady Macbeth astutely observed: “What’s done cannot be undone.”
In order for us to be heard, it might be helpful for the listeners to know a bit about who we are and what we do. Many of the staffers we met were not familiar with our specialty, but we came prepared. Each member of the ACR delegation sported a bent fork on their jacket lapel or blouse. (This month’s “President’s Perspective,” p. 4, features some more photos of the fork pins.) This brilliantly simple lapel-pin design is a key feature of the ACR’s Simple Tasks public relations campaign (www.SimpleTasks.org). These forks served as great conversation starters. Although one of us was asked whether we represented the food and beverage industry, most Congressional staffers seemed to experience that “aha!” moment when they juxtaposed the metaphor of the bent fork with the definition of what a rheumatologist does. It gives us a face and an identity by highlighting the struggles that our patients face every day.
Walking through the hallways of Congress, it was hard not to notice that many of our fellow citizen visitors to Congress were easily identifiable. For example, there were the swarms of realtors sporting teal blue T-shirts bearing their organization’s logo. I sell houses and I vote! Then there were the bikers wearing worn leather vests that were adorned with a variety of patches, mostly related to their military service to the country. I ride motorcycles and I vote! Years ago, I recall taking a cab from the Minneapolis airport to the convention center where the annual meeting of the ACR was being held. I realized that I must be getting close to my destination when I began to notice clusters, then droves of men wearing beige khaki pants and blue blazers, the standard colors of the rheumatologist circa 1985. For those ACR members who still adhere to this dress code, adding the bent fork lapel pin will just make you look that much cooler. I can vouch that our female colleagues visiting the Hill looked pretty sharp sporting their bent cutlery, too!