The Hill 2017
Last week, I had the pleasure of lobbying on the Hill with the people in this photo: Mark Zacur with Fisher Healthcare, Mike Abney with Quidel, and Jennifer Zinn with Roche Diagnostics. Our guide was Chol Pak of Fisher Healthcare. (He’s taking the photo)
Thanks to HIDA, we had nine meetings scheduled with Congressmen and Senators across the Hill. These meetings lasted anywhere from 20-30 minutes, and more times than not we were meeting with staffers. I say it jokingly, but every one of us should thank a 25-year old today, because in Washington DC, they run our country.
Here are the issues we lobbied for on behalf of our industry:
- Emergency Preparedness. Initiatives need to be developed to ensure the availability of certain products (like gloves, needles, and other protective equipment)
- Prescription Device Wholesaler Licensure Standards. Latta (R-OH) is putting forth a bill to standardize licensing for distributors of medical products. Currently it is different state by state.
- Value of Diagnostics. We continue to ask for delays and changes to the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA). Seventy percent of all medical treatment is based on a diagnostic test. These tests make up less than 2 percent of the healthcare spend in the United States. Cutting reimbursement to these tests will increase the cost of care, because organizations will stop running them.
- Medical Device Tax Repeal. Make the medical device tax permanently repealed verses the two-year moratorium. This allows device manufacturers to put money back in the United States and in to R&D.
For the most part, each of these topics made sense to our audience and were well received.
If you have never been to the Hill and seen firsthand the workings of our government, I encourage you to make it a bucket list priority. While our country isn’t perfect, the process in DC that our forefathers put in place is something to behold.
I’m so thankful I was born in America!
Dedicated to our industry,
Scott Adams