Legislative Advocacy Overview
Government policies affect virtually every aspect of the practice of medicine, making political advocacy one of the most important activities our medical society engages in on behalf of physicians and patients. At SFMS and CMA we focus on the following issues:
- Ensuring Access to Quality Medical Care
- Strengthening Public Health
- Promoting Health Education and Advancing Careers in Health
- Protecting the Physician-Patient Relationship
- Working to protect patients
- Preserving economic stability
- Advancing new technologies
As a physician, you are in a unique position to offer advice to lawmakers about specific legislation affecting the medical profession. You can also help increase patient access to the important services that physicians provide. It is not only the right thing to do, so that your patients’ interests are best served, but it is also good for the stability of the medical profession.
The following is information on SFMS and CMA’s legislative advocacy activities. Call Quinn Gregory at 916-630-7030 to become more involved.
Local Legislative Committee: SFMS's local legislative committee is open to all members and is a one year term. Personal contact with elected representatives can affect how votes are cast in Sacramento and in Washington. Help us build relationships and communicate with elected officials to ensure lawmakers’ decisions are guided by medical experts.
We frequently have opportunities that often come up on short notice and need physicians to attend meetings to share their personal stories with our legislators. Help us get our message out!
Legislative Database: Search the database for legislative, legal and regulatory issues currently being tracked.
Grassroots Advocacy: Register here to find your elected officials, get alerts when your involvement can make a difference in legislation, and register to receive alerts in your RSS feed reader.
House of Delegates: The CMA House of Delegates convenes annually to debate and act on resolutions and reports dealing with myriad medical practice, public health and CMA governance issues. Policies adopted by the House are implemented by the CMA Board of Trustees, which also deals with the many interim policy issues that arise between annual sessions.
The power of SFMS and CMA’s advocacy efforts can be seen through our most recent victory. Our society and CMA as a whole worked tirelessly for several years to convince members of congress to repeal SGR by consistently meeting and educating them about why SGR hurtful to medical providers and patients. Thanks to these efforts, Medicare SGR became history!