Hit the Hill Day a success

Yesterday several members from District Six who had traveled to Washington DC met with their elected representatives and their staffers in the name of athletic training. Some of the District Six leadership that attended were National Director Brian Conway, SWATA President Mike Carroll, SWATA Convention Chair BJ Maack, and NATA CEPAT chair Kathy Dieringer. There were also many other members from Texas and Arkansas in attendance. The NATA continues to fight for its members by moving forward with HR 1137 or the ATEAM legislation (Athletic Trainers Equal Access to Medicare). This is a legislative fix to a ruling made about five years ago by the Center for Medicare Services which said that physicians are not able to have athletic trainers provide "incident to" services.

I was able to meet with my congressman to discuss the ATEAM legislation and also this year's hot topic of concussions and having adequate athletic health care available for young athletes. I came away from the meeting feeling like this process does indeed work and our legislators do listen. With health care being such a hot topic on the Hill these days our cause is particularly timely.

While I understand that not all of you have the time to travel to Washington DC to personally everyone can send an e-mail to their elected representative. To communicate with your representatives go to www.nata.org and about half way down on the right is the link for the legislative alert center. It only takes a few minutes to do, but the results of this communication will benefit all of us.