Do you know who your House Representative is? There are thirteen districts in NC, each representing multiple counties or pieces of counties. We have 11 Republicans and one Democrat and one open seat since Mel Watt was sent from Charlotte to a Federal post by President Obama. You can easily find this person by going on Thomas.gov or Congress.gov or StripSafely.com. Then you type in your zip-code and your representative will be listed with their contact info. Let them know we are watching what they do with our bill H.R. 1274.
Your Senators are Kay Hagan (www.hagan.senate.gov) and Richard Burr (www.burr.senate.gov) . Hagan has already signed on to S. 945 but Burr has not (YET!) signed on as a co-sponsor. Hagan is up for re-election in the fall. Burr is not up for a vote until 2016. One third of the Senate is up for re-election every even year to take office the next January after their election. They are elected for a six year term.
Go to their website and see when they will be in your area. We need to know these folk and be in contact with them at least once a month if not weekly. Old school was handwritten notes were the best received, but since 9/11 e-mail has become the best form of communication. All post has to be screened and ensured that it is not arsenic laced or the like before it can be delivered. Hand delivered is acceptable if you go to their Town Hall meetings. Send birthday cards. Call them.
Both S.945 (Sheheen D-NH/Collins R-ME) and H.R. 1274 (Whitfield R-KY/DeGette D-CO) are bi-partisan bills proposed to allow CDE’s to be recognized providers of diabetes education. This corrects an error in our original bill (passed in 1998) which allowed diabetes education to be an approved and billable option for Medicare recipients but did not specify who would provide the service. This bill allows for the severely underutilized dollars provided for DSMT to be utilized. It is budget neutral and would save the budget $2 Billion (yes that is Billion with a B) over 10 years if these folks could access diabetes education.