Why Advocacy Is Not Just for “Advocates:” Five Reasons to Join Healthy Me PA
June 29, 2018
Most everyone needs and uses health care at some point in our lives. We who work in health care are doubly invested: for ourselves and our loved ones when we are sick or injured, and for the patients and communities we serve.
Who better to advocate for government policies and budgets that make good health care sense?
In this difficult political environment, with so many proposals to cut hospital funding and reduce insurance coverage, what better time to tell lawmakers and elected officials what you think?
With new social media tools at hand, what’s stopping you from being an occasional advocate—just one or two times a year, when it really counts?
Becoming a citizen advocate is as simple as joining HAP’s Healthy Me PA online community by:
Not convinced? I hope you’ll consider these five reasons why joining Healthy Me PA is a good idea.
- It helps you help your hospital or health system when bad policy or big funding cuts threaten the work you do for patients and communities.
Simply by joining Healthy Me PA, you’ll be on the list of Pennsylvanians who, once or twice a year:
- Receive a Facebook message or email when something really big—like hospital Medicaid payment cuts—is happening
- Can click on that message to contact the lawmakers or elected officials who represent you, to tell them what you think
These alerts are very, very few and far between. But you’ll know when it’s time to take action. Lawmakers really take notice when individual citizens reach out, especially when that outreach is judicious.
- It’s easy, fun, and takes very little of your time.
Clicking on an “action alert” every six months or so, to contact lawmakers about an issue that could affect your job and your patients—you have time for that, right?
In addition, if you want to learn more, your Facebook or Twitter feeds will have “bite-size” explanations of important policy issues that could help, or hurt, Pennsylvania health care.
Check out this video about telemedicine. It’s only 18 seconds long!
- It spreads the word about the great things Pennsylvania hospitals are doing.
Each month, we share six or more stories about Pennsylvania hospitals with 151,725 people who have joined Healthy Me PA. More than 6,000 people saw a post about Lehigh Valley Health Network’s new veterans center.
- It supports you in your pursuit of better health.
Healthy Me PA is more than just health policy. In fact, it’s mostly about how to live healthier, better manage chronic diseases like diabetes or asthma, or use your health coverage to get the health care services you need … with a heavy dose of fun along the way.
Have you ever done goat yoga? You might want to after you watch the video!
- It works! Just look what happened with this telemedicine legislation.
The Healthy Me PA community helped advance an important law supporting the use of telemedicine.
Insurers were holding up legislation that would, among other things, require them to pay for a health care service provided through telemedicine if they paid for that same service provided “in person.”
As fair as this sounds, we were having trouble getting the law up for a vote in the state Senate. A full court press by the Healthy Me PA community helped break the log jam.
Just three days after “activating” community members with Facebook and email alerts, every senator in the state had been contacted by Pennsylvanians who wanted action on telemedicine.
The next day, the Pennsylvania Senate unanimously passed the legislation.
Now the bill is pending in the Pennsylvania House, where we think we’ll face another tough fight.
Please be ready to help. Join Healthy Me PA now.
Tags: Public Health | Federal Advocacy | State Advocacy | Regulatory Advocacy