Federal Advocacy Coordinator Reports/Updates

May 2021

Summary of Federal Advocacy Activities for the 2020-21 year
Submitted by Shahana Koslofsky, PhD, OPA Federal Advocacy Coordinator 

Here is a summary of the Federal Advocacy Activities over the last year. As you can tell, OPA, APA, and I have been busy advocating for a number of issues including preventing Medicare cuts, addressing health disparities, ensuring access to audio only telehealth services, and managing student loan debt.  

July 2020: Scott Barstow, Senior Director of Congressional and Federal Affairs at APA, and I attended a meeting with Senator Wyden to discuss the need for access to audio only telehealth reimbursement.  

September 2020: I met with a representative for Representative Schrader’s office (Congressional District 5) to discuss HR884 (The Medicare Mental Health Access Act/Physician Definition Bill). I was joined by OPA member, Dr. Marsha Green, who shared some powerful stories about the ways in which the physician oversight needed for her work with her Medicare clients created multiple barriers for the work she does with our most vulnerable communities. I also sent letters to our Senators and Representatives asking them to support legislation that would prevent cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates. 

October 2020:  I sent a letter to CMS on behalf of OPA to address the following issues:  opposing Medicare cuts, limiting telehealth restrictions, ensuring payment for telephone only services, and eliminating physician definition. This letter included personal stories from Oregon Psychologists about the ways in which these issues are interfering with the ability to provide needed mental health care to Oregonians.  

Roseann Fish Getchell and I also attended an APA Advocacy Summit. There were two days of trainings and then a third day of virtual meetings with the offices for Senators Merkley and Wyden and Representatives Bonamici and Blumenauer. Dr. Getchell and I had very productive legislative meetings. We discussed the following three pieces of legislation related to student loan debt: HR7761, which provides Support of Public Loan Forgiveness for less than full time work; HR6720, which expands public loan forgiveness to private loans; and HR7449/S4141, which allows students to re-finance their public and private loans at the new historically low rates.  

January 2021: OPA signed on with 393 other state and professional organizations in support of H.R. 8702/S. 5007, which is aimed at preventing further Medicare.  

March 2021: Practice Leadership Conference Advocacy weekend:  Members of the OPA Board of Directors and I had meetings with the offices of all of our Senators and Representatives. Our legislative asks this year included the following three items.  First, we asked for a permanent expansion of audio only telehealth services for Medicare.  Second, we asked for support for legislation making sure private insurers cover telehealth until the end of the public health emergency and for 90 days afterwards.  Finally, we asked for financial support for Graduate Psychology Education in the form of HRSA grants for graduate and internship programs who offer training in interprofessional settings working with underserved communities. George Fox University and OHSU each have a GPE grant. We also asked for financial support in the form of the Minority Fellowship Program; this is a program with SAMHSA/APA to offer fellowships for training psychologists to provide culturally competent services to diverse communities.  

Overall, our meetings went well. As you know, we have very supportive congressional leaders. Drs. Jessica Murakami-Brundage, Morgan Sammons, and I met with Congressman Bentz for the first time; he was elected in District 2 following Congressman Walden’s retirement. The meeting went well and I hope we can continue to foster a health working relationship with our new Congressman.  

Summary: As you can see, this has been a very busy year on the advocacy front. Thank you to all the OPA members who shared their stories with me or who called or wrote to our Senators and Representatives to support these advocacy efforts—we are making a difference. I will conclude this submission with the exciting announcement that I was selected as the APA Congressional Fellow for the 21-22 year. This is an opportunity for me to work on Capitol Hill in a congressional office for 1 year starting in September. I am very excited for this opportunity; I have thoroughly enjoyed the advocacy work I have been doing with OPA/APA and I look forward to the many exciting opportunities in Washington DC. I will be taking a sabbatical from my faculty position at Pacific University to complete the Fellowship. 

Once I am the Congressional Fellow, I have to resign my position as the OPA FAC. I will work with Mary Peterson (Federal Education Advocacy Coordinator) and the OPA BOD to help select someone to fill the FAC role. I will also share some thoughts I have on having a lead FAC and an Assistant FAC since the responsibilities are increasing. If anyone is interested in learning more about the FAC role, please contact me. 


 

November 2020

Federal Advocacy Report
November 5, 2020
Submitted by Shahana Koslofsky, PhD
[email protected]

There were two topics for legislative advocacy this fall:

In September I sent letters to our Senators and Representatives on behalf of APA and OPA asking them to support legislation that would prevent cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates.

In October Roseann Fish Getchell and I attended an APA Advocacy Summit. There were two days of trainings and a third day of virtual meetings with the offices for Senators Merkley and Wyden and Representatives Bonamici and Bleumeanuer. Dr. Getchell and I had very productive legislative meetings where we discussed three pieces of legislation related to student loan debt;

  1. HR7761—Support of Public Loan Forgiveness for less than full time work
  2. HR6720—Expansion of Public Loan Forgiveness to private loans
  3. HR7449/S4141—allow students to re-finance their public and private loans at the new historically low rates

Looking ahead:

  1. APA will again be reaching out to Representatives and Senators to advocate for the prevention of Medicare cuts for health care professions. I am waiting for the specific details on this legislation and will keep members updated as I have more information to share.
  2. APA is preparing a formal response to Executive Order (EO) 13950 which halts many diversity training programs in federal agencies. APA strongly opposes this EO and, in addition to submitting their own response, I suspect they will reach out to us to submit comments as well.

Information on both of these issues will be forthcoming. Please stay tuned and be prepared to submit stories on how these issues impact you as a provider, business owner, recipient of services, and a constituent. As a reminder, governmental offices consistently say that personal feedback from constituents is the most important and powerful information for our congressional leaders. Your voice matters and you can make a difference.


September 2020

Federal Advocacy Report
September 3, 2020
Submitted by Shahana Koslofsky, PhD
[email protected]

This has been another busy few months for Federal Advocacy Coordinators (FACs). HR 884 (The Medicare Mental Health Access Act/Physician Definition Bill) was not included in the Energy and Commerce vote in July. In order to not lose the previous momentum related to this bill, I met with a staff member for Representative Kurt Schrader’s office (Congressional District 5) to discuss HR 884. I was joined by OPA member Dr. Marsha Green, who shared some powerful stories about the ways in which physician oversight for Medicare clients creates multiple barriers for the work she does with our most vulnerable communities. Representative Schrader’s office seemed open to hearing the information we shared and suggested that the main opposition of which they are aware is from other medical professionals. This is a common response, as some medical professionals see this legislation as a scope of practice bill. I explained all the reasons that this is not a scope of practice bill and asked for Representative Schrader’s office to help bring this legislation to a vote and consider co-sponsoring this bill.

Scott Barstow, Senior Director of Congressional and Federal Affairs at APA, and I also attended a meeting with Senator Ron Wyden where I was able to discuss the need for access to audio-only telehealth reimbursement. He was open to this idea and appeared to commit to including this in future legislation.

I was very pleased with the responses from several Oregon psychologists who were willing to share their stories about their difficulties with Medicare as it relates to these specific issues. I want to start by saying thank you!  Various presentations I have attended continue to emphasize that the most impactful advocacy work is related to the actual stories from congressional districts about the ways in which various pieces of legislation impact our lives. I will continue to reach out to OPA members as new requests arise. I encourage everyone to consider participating in this important advocacy work; I find the work to be very rewarding, and it is an important opportunity for us to use our skills as psychologist to advocate for change in meaningful ways.