PHYSICIAN ADVOCACY
Governmental Affairs
Welcome to MSSNY membership from the Division of Governmental Affairs. Every year our division analyzes thousands of bills introduced in the New York State Legislature that impact upon the ability of physicians to provide necessary care to their patients.
MSSNY issues memoranda of support or opposition to the Legislature where appropriate on hundreds of these bills, and our lobbyists work with members of the Assembly, Senate and Governor’s office to advocate for passage of legislation which the Society supports. We also work to assure that legislation opposed by MSSNY is not enacted or that it is amended to remove objectionable provisions.
Tips on making the most of your political clout through tools your membership provides:
• Legislators need to hear directly from physician constituents (in addition to MSSNY lobbyists) if they are to believe that an issue is of serious concern.
• Use the Grassroots Action Center on the MSSNY Website to contact your representatives in next to no time at all, with messages we’ve prepared or your own edited versions. All you need to know is your zip code to launch a letter or an email to the Governor, legislative leaders and your local representatives.
Let us know about issues you feel we should be addressing. E-mail Moe Auster, Esq., at mauster@mssny.org. We’ll carry your message to the legislators.
In the last few legislative sessions, we have faced an onslaught of proposals which would have adversely impacted the practice of medicine, and we achieved real and substantial victories:
• We worked to reduce administrative hassles by enacting legislation
o to eliminate the requirement to report to the State when circumstances require a prescription to be written instead of being e-prescribed
o to reduce credentialing delays and enabling override of insurer step therapy protocols
• We organized physician advocacy across the primary and specialty care spectrum to push back against proposals that would have drastically cut fees for care to Workers' Compensation patients
• Working together with affected specialty societies,
o our advocacy resulted in the defeat of proposals that would have drastically cut payments to physicians participating in the Medicaid patient-centered medical home program
o we defeated virtually every broad scope of practice expansion bill, including State Budget proposals to permit independent practice for nurse-anesthetists, and legislation to permit nurse practitioners to enter into drug management protocols with pharmacists
• Our advocacy resulted in the defeat of proposals
o which would have limited injured worker choice of physician in the Workers Compensation program
o that would have greatly expanded the investigatory power of the State to investigate alleged physician misconduct
o that would have greatly increased the power of the Medicaid Inspector General to penalize physicians for billing errors
o which would have authorized big box stores like Walmart and CVS to directly employ nurse practitioners to deliver care to the public.
• We defeated several proposals which would have placed untenable conditions on obtaining state funded excess liability protection, including successfully opposing proposals to require Medicaid participation and having to obtain a tax clearance
A short review of some additional recent important victories MSSNY has won for you:
Passage of legislation to assure the availability and transparency of comprehensive out of network coverage for our patients and preservation of usual and customary, a victory important for all physicians, not just those who stay out of network, because it preserves some ability for you to walk away when an insurer is offering an undesirable contract. Without a viable option to be out of network, all physicians are negatively impacted.