ADVOCACY ACTION CENTER

Support the Safe Step Act

When insurance payers require someone with PH to try and fail a less-expensive therapy before getting medication their physician prescribed, the resulting delay can be devastating.

That’s why PHA supports the Safe Step Act, a bill that limits “step-therapy” or “fail-first” requirements and protects everyone’s access to the therapy right for them.

Use PHA’s template to email your members of Congress, and ask them to co-sponsor the Safe Step Act.

Protect patient access to charitable assistance

Congress must act to protect people with PH from copay accumulator policies. The Help Ensure Lower Patient Copays Act (HELP Copays Act, H.R. 5801) requires Affordable Care Act-regulated insurance plans to accept payments from charitable assistance sources and count them toward patients’ deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. Use PHA’s email template to ask your elected official to cosponsor H.R. 5801 today.

Improve the Supplemental Security Income program

Congress has failed to update the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for more than 30 years. As a result, millions of people with disabilities, including PH, live in poverty.

If enacted, the SSI Restoration Act would keep SSI beneficiaries from falling below the poverty line. It would simplify the claims process, expand resources and income limits, set the minimum benefit at 100% of the federal poverty level, and eliminate punitive reductions in benefits.

Ask your legislators to support this legislation with PHA’s email template.

Expand access to out-of-state practitioners

The Temporary Reciprocity to Ensure Access to Treatment (TREAT) Act would eliminate a barrier to care for people with PH. It would allow licensed health care professionals to practice in any state for at least six months after the end of the public health emergency.

Tell your legislators how access to out-of-state medical care improves PH patients’ wellbeing. Use PHA’s email template to ask them to support the TREAT Act.

Tell Congress to protect telehealth coverage

Telemedicine provides people with PH better access to specialists and reduces travel burdens for routine care visits. Congress is considering legislation to make permanent expanded access to telehealth for Medicare beneficiaries beyond the pandemic.

Use PHA’s email template to tell your lawmakers why access to virtual visits with health care providers is important to you and your family. Tell your members of Congress to support the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act of 2021 to ensure that telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries are here to stay.

Stay involved

When you join PHA’s grassroots advocacy network, we send you the resources you need a few times a year to stay in touch with your members of Congress about issues that affect your life. Be heard. Be a PH advocate.

Schedule a meeting with your members of Congress

Your members of Congress work for you. Move PH to the top of their legislative agendas through planned phone calls, video meetings and visits to their offices in your state. Schedule your visit by completing our form or contact us at 301-565-3004 x749.