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WEAMA January 2012 Legislative
Update
Posted January 19, 2012, Prepared by Leslie Emerick
The 2012 session of the Washington State Legislature began on Monday, January 9th with
the state still facing a $1.5 billion budget shortfall. This is the 60 day-short session of the
biennial legislature. Typically during a short session the focus is on the Supplemental
Operating Budget which makes corrections in the two year Operating Budget that is
developed during the 105 day-long session of the legislature. This year is different as the
state continues to face declining tax revenues to support the essential functions of
government.
In November, Governor Gregoire called the legislature back into session for a 17 day
Special Session of the legislature which ended on December 14th, 2011. Legislators left
town only addressing about a third of the shortage by making $1.4 billion in budget
reductions that were considered uncontroversial. The tough budget decisions are yet to
come that will determine funding for health care, education and corrections, which are
the three big budget drivers in the state. Members of the budget teams in both the House
and Senate will be presenting their budget proposals soon. It will be a daunting task to
find another $1.5 billion in cuts and legislators still have a lot of work to do before they
adjourn.
State budget reductions that reduce health care benefits for the poor have the possibility
of impacting EAMP’s in our communities. Recently a report came out that over 1 million
citizens in Washington State do not have access to health care and this could get worse
with pending state health care cuts. This impacts the overall health of our citizens and
may push more people towards treatments that are less costly, yet effective, by
EAMPs. Many professions are also seeing their licensure fees rise as the Department of
Health is losing state general fund support for administrative costs and the full cost of the
programs are being passed on to the practitioners.
Even with the huge budget reductions on the horizon, as of today, 1,051 bills have been
introduced for consideration by the legislature, with many of them being policy bills.
Health care hearings have been full of new bills impacting health care providers and
gearing up for implementing the affordable care act. I have attached a list of bills that we are currently tracking for
WEAMA. Our legislative team has been reviewing the bills as they are introduced to
determine impacts on EAMPs. So far, most of the bills have not had direct impacts, but
we are watching bills that implement the Affordable Care Act closely. At this point it
looks like the laws in Washington State protecting “Every Category Provider” will insure
that EAMPs are included in the new health insurance exchanges, but we want to keep
advocating on the federal level to insure inclusion under the new federal laws.
WEAMA continues to work on researching evidence based data for acupuncture and East
Asian medicine for a data review with the Department of Labor and Industries (L & I) to
possibly become a provider under their system in the future. This is a long, involved
process that can take years as there is much stakeholder work to do both at the
association level and at the agency level. It would also require rulemaking down the road
and currently there is a moratorium on new rules by the Governor. So please consider
these efforts a work in progress as we continue to meet with staff at L & I to discuss the
process and the possibilities.
WEAMA was recently invited to attend a meeting with the Physical Therapy Board to
discuss issues around dry needling being performed by Physical Therapists. At this time,
there are no proposals on the table to include dry needling in their scope of practice, but
it could be a possibility in the future. WEAMA responded with a strongly worded letter to
their board stating our concerns with this concept and firmly reiterating that dry needling
is considered acupuncture and we would resist any efforts on their part to perform such
procedures without appropriate training as is required by EAMPs.
In summary, WEAMA will be monitoring all bills potentially impacting EAMP’s during the
2012 legislative session and testifying as needed. We will continue to monitor the budget
reductions and all rulemaking that could impact our practitioners to assure that our scope
of practice is protected and that we are included in the new health care reform efforts
under the Affordable Care Act.
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