Who We Are
The Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights (CPPR) is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization made up of more than 10,000 doctors, healthcare professionals, patients and engaged citizens that believe medical decisions should be left between patients and doctors.Thankfully, here in the United States we have the best healthcare in the world. However, too many Americans fall through the cracks of our healthcare system and can’t get the medical care they need. For more than a year CPPR has been proactively working with policymakers to improve our nation’s healthcare delivery system. However, our work has only just begun. We have serious concerns with many elements of the newly passed healthcare reform law known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We are committed to working to improve or repeal those elements of the new law that will weaken our healthcare system, not improve it.
Recognizing that each of us are different and have different healthcare needs, we support choice and options in our healthcare – not a one-size fits all approach that simply provides everyone with the same level of substandard care. We believe that healthcare decisions should be made by patients and doctors and not by insurers and bureaucrats.
CPPR members will continue to work together to support efforts that strengthen and improve the quality of care for all Americans. We are committed to supporting policies that allow patients to keep their doctors and chose their health coverage, and we will continue to work to ensure that the new law be implemented with an eye towards medical innovation and discovery and not solely as a means to cut costs and ration care.
CPPR will continue to work with reform-minded policymakers, third party advocates and concerned citizens to advocate for a vision of a healthcare delivery system that places the needs of patients first.
To be successful, CPPR must:
1. Monitor Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: CPPR will closely monitor the new healthcare law as it is implemented and work to significantly reform any components that could undermine our best-in-the-world healthcare system including:
a. Promote Patient-Centered Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER): The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act included some meaningful reforms that if enacted as envisioned will provide better information for physicians to use as they decide the best course of treatment for their patients. The reforms should also help ensure that CER is conducted with the patient in mind, and not simply focus on cutting healthcare costs. CPPR members will work to ensure that these reforms are enacted so that CER becomes a tool to help improve patient outcomes and not simply a mechanism to ration care.
b. Oppose “Academic Detailing” Programs: CPPR strongly opposes recent efforts by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) to earmark $30 million in CER funds to hire professionals to communicate “unbiased information” on the results of research to physicians and other prescribers. CPPR will work to curtail the academic detailing program that represents a further intrusion by the federal government into the patient/physician relationship.
c. Oppose drastic cuts to the Medicare Program: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is financed largely through tax increases and cuts of $500 billion from the Medicare program including more than $130 billion from the popular Medicare Advantage program. These cuts will affect access and quality of care for seniors and are particularly troubling in light of the long-term solvency issues the program currently faces. Seniors who have paid into the Medicare system are entitled to receive their benefits and CPPR will work aggressively to ensure that the proposed cuts do not go into effect.
d. Limit the power and authority of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB): The IPAB is one of the least known and most concerning elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. If enacted as envisioned, the IPAB will have unprecedented power to make sweeping changes to the Medicare program without Congressional approval. Beginning in 2015, a 15 member panel of unelected bureaucrats will be established with the mandate to cut Medicare spending by $4 billion per year. These cuts are in addition to the $500 billion discussed above. The IPAB is required by law to meet certain targeted savings in Medicare and these savings will affect seniors’ access to the latest medical technologies. CPPR will work to ensure that the IPAB can’t impose cuts in Medicare spending without congressional involvement and oversight.
2. Pursue Medical Liability Reform: Meaningful medical liability reform was a glaring omission in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. According to a October 2009 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, medical-liability reforms such as capping noneconomic damages and tightening the statue of limitations for filing a suit would trim $54 billion from the federal deficit over 10 years, largely by curbing defensive medicine. CPPR will continue to fight for these common-sense reforms that have the overwhelming support of the American people.
3. Reform the Medicare Payment System to protect seniors: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act failed to address the Medicare physician payment issue by permanently repealing the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula and replacing it with a payment system that aligns payment rates for Medicare services more closely with physician costs. CPPR will work to address this to avoid any drastic cuts to the Medicare payment rates including the 21% payment cut slated for June 1st, 2010.
4. Oppose Therapeutic Substitution: CPPR will work to ensure that prescribing physicians’ scripts are filled as written and not switched at the pharmacy counter simply to save costs. Too often, this practice is done without notifying either the prescribing physician or the patient. Often times the result is patients’ receiving ineffective medicines or suffering serious adverse effects. As healthcare professionals, we have serious concerns about pharmacists becoming engaged in the practice of medicine by overruling the decision of the prescribing physician.