ACA Legislative Alert Bulletin 2: Further Integrate the Services Provided by Doctors of Chiropractic in the Veterans Affairs Health System

In order to maximize the profession’s advocacy activities at the National Chiropractic Legislative Conference (NCLC 2014), the ACA is coordinating an advance online grassroots campaign in an effort to “soften the beachhead,” when the ground forces arrive in Washington for Capitol Hill visits on February 27th. Please read carefully and take the specific action requested below.

BACKGROUND: The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) health care system continues to discriminate against doctors of chiropractic and America’s veterans who need and deserve the essential services DCs provide. We have long argued that the DVA needs to “fully integrate” doctors of chiropractic into their healthcare system, however, chiropractic services continue to remain unavailable in nearly half of the nation’s major DVA treatment facilities. This lack of care is not only unfair to America’s veterans, but sends a very damaging signal to the consumer public, private employers, and other hospitals and healthcare systems, that the DVA does not consider the services provided by doctors of chiropractic to be important or valued enough to be made routinely available to all consumers and patients in need of our care. Gaining “full inclusion” in the DVA would send a strong signal not only to our veterans, but to all insurers, employers, medical doctors and hospitals on a nationwide basis.

There is legislation currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives that would greatly expand our profession’s presence within the DVA health care system, HR 921, the Chiropractic Care Available to All Veterans Act. We urgently need to gain additional cosponsors and support for this bill. We simply need to generate a strong grassroots response on HR 921, in order to increase the likelihood that the legislation will be enacted into law this year.

ACTION NEEDED: Please CLICK HERE to go to the ACA’s Legislative Action Center. From this link, you will be able to send the appropriate pro-chiropractic message to your elected federal official on Capitol Hill on the issue described above.

Remember -- all of the information you need to effectively respond to this Alert Bulletin can be conveniently accessed with just a few mouse clicks -- so please respond this important request ASAP. Also please note: You can greatly increase the effectiveness of this grassroots campaign by forwarding this message to your staff members, family and patients, anyone can access the ACA Legislative Action Center and we encourage them to do so.

 

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