IDF Volunteer Action = More HR 5597 Co-Sponsors

IDF Volunteers Ginny Job and Tommie Cassen with cosponsor Rep. Dennis Moore (KS) on Advocacy Day

It was just over a month ago when Congresswoman Doris Matsu (D-CA) and 7 original co-sponsors introduced HR 5597, the Medicare Patient IVIG Access Demonstration Project. Because of the efforts of IDF volunteers and members of the PIDD community, there are now 28 co-sponsors with more on the way. What has been fascinating over the past month is activity on the part of all members of the PIDD community.

The systematic follow-up by IDF Advocacy Day volunteers this year has been phenomenal and unprecedented.  They have sent Thank You notes to people with whom they met on Advocacy Day.  They have sent follow-up reminders to staff.  They have called staff.  They have sent Action Alert letters. Of the 22 co-sponsors (as of this writing), 12 are directly related to Advocacy Day volunteers.  Never have we had this type of concentrated effort.  And it is paying off!!

Whoever said that sending Action Alert letters doesn’t mean anything?  There are 5 new co-sponsors whose only contact with IDF is through the letters they have received from our Action Alert system. They were not visited on advocacy Day.  We don’t know of anyone from IDF who has had had contact with them prior to receiving Action Alert letters.  Our only conclusion is that they responded to constituents who wrote them through our Action Alert.  We do know that one new co-sponsor contacted an IDF letter writer for more information and subsequently became a co-sponsor. 

It is amazing the number of people who believe that their letters don’t count.  They do!!!

Another volunteer who couldn’t go to Advocacy Day met with her Representative’s staff in her home district and then repeatedly followed-up until the Representative called her personally to tell her that he will be a co-sponsor.  There is nothing like tenacity.

Four of our new co-sponsors (and at least two more are pending) came by way of conversations with our industry supporters  who feel just as strongly about the justice of HR 5597 as do patients and families.  And, we thank them for their continued strong active support of the PIDD community.

People always ask, “What happens next with the bill”?  We anticipate that before the end of 2010 (and after the November elections), a health care bill will emerge that we hope will be the legislative vehicle for the IVIG demonstration project.   HR 5597 will not be voted up or down on its own.  Rather it will be offered as an amendment to a larger health care bill.

Between now and whenever such a bill comes under consideration, IDF and friends need to keep momentum by gaining more co-sponsors and spreading the word through every means of communication – IDF Friends, Common Ground, Facebook, Twitter and even old fashioned letters to editors, legislators and whomever may listen and be helpful to the cause.

Thanks for all of your work!!  And, let us all keep at it to get more co-sponsors and keep the dialogue moving along!!!! 

Here’s the current list of Co-sponsors of HR 5597: