On Tuesday, September 29, AAMFT held a fly-in day in support of legislation in the house and senate that would allow MFTs to be reimbursed by Medicare. AAMFT flew members from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut and New Jersey to Washington, DC. We provided in-depth training on how to conduct a Hill meeting and then members and AAMFT staff spent the day on the hill meeting with their Senators and Representatives to ask for support for H.R.2759 — The Mental Health Access Improvement Act of 2015 and S.1830 — Seniors Mental Health Access Improvement Act of 2015. Both of these bills would allow licensed Marriage and Family Therapists and Mental Health Counselors to be able to be reimbursed by Medicare Part B.
AAMFT members met with 24 congressional offices in both the House and Senate. In addition, we initiated a grassroots social media push on the same day with the hashtag #MFTsInMedicare. AAMFT members from around the country were tweeting their representatives to support MFTs to be included in Medicare. We also had members make phone calls and post on Congressional Facebook pages to get the word out.
Please continue to reach out to Congress - find sample scripts and posts here.
AAMFT members met with the following offices:
Sen. Debbie Stabenow
Sen. Tammy Baldwin
Sen. Rob Portman
Sen. Gary Peters
Rep. Jim Himes
Sen. Sherrod Brown
Sen. Tim Kaine
Rep. Scott Garrett
Sen. Ted Cruz
Sen. Ron Johnson
Sen. Mark Warner
Rep. Pat Tiberi
Sen. Bob Menendez
Rep. Tim Ryan
Rep. Robert Hurt
Sen. Richard Blumenthal
Rep. Marcia Fudge
Sen. Chris Murphy
Rep. Mike Bishop
Rep. Don Beyer
Rep. Michael Conaway
Rep. Mark Pocan
Sen. Cory Booker
The response from our AAMFT members involved in the fly-in was overwhelmingly positive. Keep an eye out for more opportunities like this as we continue to work to ramp up the AAMFT Family TEAM!