Dr. Worthing urged rheumatologists to join the American Medical Association, which would strengthen the field’s representation within that group, to submit comments to proposed regulations through regulations.gov, and to send emails and make phone calls to elected officials about important issues. Just “getting your voice heard” makes a difference, he said. He asked all rheumatologists and interprofessional team members to go online to the ACR’s Legislative Action Center to communicate directly with members of Congress using prefilled messages they can edit.
He said that although Congress and the administration have been “absorbed” in partisan battles, government shutdowns and other distractions, “the same strategies that we’ve had in the past continue to work, which are proposing common-sense approaches, fixes that maintain our patients’ access to treatments, diagnostic testing, therapies.
“Usually when those kinds of initiatives get through Congress, and passed into law, they have wide bipartisan support, and these times are no different.”
Thomas R. Collins is a freelance writer living in South Florida.
