AAPM and Health Care Reform: Your Voice Is Needed

Abstract

The debate these days is not so much about whether health care is going to be reformed, but how. Undoubtedly, there will be reform; the discussion now is the format in which it will materialize. With the focus on health care reform at the national level taking center stage, this moment in time offers pain care practitioners the ideal opportunity to continue our push for pain care reform. There are many activities in which the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) members are providing leadership to this effort. Particularly noteworthy is the activity of our Committee for Legislative Affairs, spearheaded by Scott Fishman, MD, Chair of AAPM's Legislative Committee and Past AAPM President, Perry Fine, MD, AAPM Treasurer, and Phil Saigh, AAPM Executive Director. Ongoing news on this subject can be found on our Website at http://www.painmed.org/advocacy. Consider, for example, the National Pain Care Policy Act, an important piece of legislation that AAPM has been advancing since 1998 with its original partners, the American Pain Society (APS), the American Headache Society, and more recently, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), which joined the Pain Care Coalition (PCC) in 2004. As you may recall, the Act would authorize an Institute of Medicine conference on pain care, promote pain research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provide comprehensive pain care education and training for health care professionals, and institute a public awareness campaign on pain management. The National Pain Care Policy Act came extremely close to being passed into law in the fall of 2008; it was then reintroduced in both Houses early in 2009. It has passed the House and now sits in a Senate committee, where it will likely remain until the health care reform debate is completed. The earliest that anyone suggests that the health care reform …