Your help is needed

The Senate is considering the House bill since they have been unable to generate their own bill that is acceptable to the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats sent the following message:

This message is being sent to notify all Democratic Senators and their offices that we are continuing to run into objections from the Republican side regarding our consideration of the House-passed Medicare physician fix bill - H.R.6331, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act. As a result of these objections, we will not be able to move to proceed to the bill and file a cloture motion on the motion to proceed until after midnight tonight. That would mean the cloture vote on the motion to proceed would not occur until Sunday, June 29th.

This is a bill we must complete action on prior to leaving for the recess. As a result, Senators should be prepared to adjust their schedule so they can be here for the Sunday vote and any other votes, such as cloture on the bill and passage of the bill which would occur later in the week."

What this means is that they are preparing to work till the last minute to pass a bill. Therefore, we need all of you contact your members and ask them to write their senators. ACLA has put together a message that our members are free to use:

Dear Senator ___________: I am [name], [title} at [laboratory name and location] which provides important laboratory services to Medicare beneficiaries in your state. I am writing to urge that you vote for cloture and passage of the "The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008" (HR 6331) when it comes before the Senate this week.

Passage of HR 6331 is urgently needed to repeal the laboratory competitive bidding demonstration project, stop a 10.1% reduction in the Physician Fee Schedule slated to take effect June 30, and extend the so-called technical component grandfather clause - all vitally important issues for laboratories and for the Medicare beneficiaries who depend on these services.

The repeal of the laboratory competitive bidding demonstration project is a provision that has bipartisan support - repeal legislation was sponsored by Senator Salazar and Senator Roberts (S. 2099). This ill conceived project imposes unworkable requirements, ignores the complexity of laboratory services and threatens the quality of, and access to, laboratory services.

Again, we strongly urge a "yes" vote for cloture and final passage of HR 6331.

If you want to know where your senator is on this, you can kind of tell by how they voted for cloture. Let me know and I can send that along.

Please circulate this! If this doesn't pass they will not do anything till after the recess so we will have another shot at getting our repeal later in the summer. (Of course even if it passes Mr. Bush can still veto it.) Thanks

Elissa Passiment
ASCLS
6701 Democracy Blvd, #300
Bethesda, MD 20817
301.657.2768 (voice)
301.657.2909
elissap@ascls.org