Our Voices Heard
Scott Adams
This time of the year is reserved for backyard cookouts, trips to the beach, and an all around great opportunity to relax. The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays, and after just returning from lobbying on the Hill, I’m even more appreciative of the freedoms and opportunities we have.
Last month through the efforts of HIDA, our industry did a fly-in to Washington, DC, to express our thoughts and concerns on a few hot issues facing us:
Emergency Preparedness: We reinforced our position that this is a bi-partisan issue incredibly important to Americans. I am happy to report every office we were in is on board with supporting the initiative.
NDAA: The National Defense Authorization Act allows federal departments and agencies to buy commercial product via an open marketplace. While this sounds good for common sundries, we feel it puts patient lives at risk for medical supplies. In most offices, once we gave them a few examples of how it could go wrong, they completely understood. We asked them to continue to work with authorized dealers for medical supplies.
International Trade Policy: The administration has suggested significant tariffs be put on products imported from China. While we are not opposed to the tariffs, we did ask that medical supplies be exempt. If the goal is to take cost out of America’s health systems, then implementing a tariff on supplies is counter intuitive. The fact that the government, through Medicare, pays for a significant amount of the care in our country would only mean they are ultimately taxiing themselves. At this time the tariffs are off the table, but that could change any day, so we wanted to be sure they were thinking through all the issues.
All and all, it was a good trip and, we were hopefully able to make a difference.
Dedicated to the industry,
R Scott Adams