PACT - Political Action Team

OSRC's PACT, in conjunction with the AARC Political Action Team, is working to promote, protect, and support Respiratory Care as a profession in the political arena. To see your state and national PACT teams at work please view the following PACT updates. By being a member of the AARC and OSRC you support these efforts.

PACT Report, Nov 2007

Winners and Losers

Winners: Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds tobacco companies: after spending over $11 million dollars to defeat Measure 50, the Healthy Kids Act,  in Oregon’s November election.  That’s $24 spent per person for every man, woman and child in the state.
Losers: New cigarette smokers.  When the cost of cigarettes goes up, 5-10% of new smokers never start smoking because they’re young and it costs too much.
Winners: The Oregon Tobacco lobby & Mark Nelson, chief lobbyist.  They pulled off yet another ad campaign to confuse voters with typical tobacco company deceit.
Losers:  116,000 Oregon kids who won’t have healthcare insurance.  Also lung, heart, stroke assocations, OMA, ONA, OSRC.

Maybe Winners:  RTs, OSRC, and, most importantly, respiratory home care patients!

HR 3968 was introduced in the House of Representatives in Washington DC this past month!  It’s taken 8 years to get legislation before Congress, which will allow patients access to the most qualified healthcare specialists in the home (RTs). 

Let’s not be Losers: Compared to shear numbers of nurses and physicians, RTs are few and far between.  So for RTs not to lose this one, most of us need to shout out loud to be heard!

 Shout Out loud!:

Take 5 minutes,access www.aarc.org or www.osrcnw.org
Click on Capital Connections, type in your Zip Code and follow the directions.
If you’re not real computer literate, it will take 10 minutes.
If you want to compose your own letter, it could take 20 minutes.

Who:  Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith.
What: Ask them to sponsor a companion bill to HR 3869 in the Senate.
Who: Darlene Hooley, she sits on the Energy & Commerce, Healthcare subcommittee
What: Ask her to both support and co-sponsor HR  3869.

Who: Representatives Waldon, Wu, Blumenhauer and DeFazio
What: Ask them to actively support HR 3869 and co-sponsor the bill.

They have been saying for 8 years that they would “support this kind of legislation” when Janet Holloway, Marilyn Barclay, Norm Kerr and myself lobbied for RTs in Washington DC. 

Need more details on HR3968?  See http://www.aarc.org/advocacy/bills/ .  There are several worthy legislations that all RTs should support, listed on this website.  Including the Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation Act (HR 552/S329), The Home Oxygen Patient Protection Act  (HR621/S1484), Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (HR1108/S625) and the Allied Health Reinvestment Act (S605)

Joe Dwan, MS, RRT
PACT Co-chair

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