VIRTUAL ADVOCACY DAY ON
CAPITOL HILL
MAY 19, 2022
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) make decisions about what treatment options they will cover for beneficiaries. Private insurers often follow the lead of CMS in coverage decisions. Congress has the power to direct CMS to take action.
On May 19, we are rallying pain warriors and advocates to demand Congress direct CMS to cover more treatment options for pain.
Over 1,658 emails have been sent already, but it is not too late to take action.
URGE CONGRESS TO TELL CMS TO COVER MORE TREATMENT OPTIONS FOR PAIN
Email your legislators.
If legislators get enough emails on the same subject, they start to pay attention. Our template email campaign takes less than two minutes to send! (We timed it!) You can edit the template and add your personal pain story if you’d like, but it’s not required.
Call your legislators.
Even if you only leave a message, or speak with an aide, this is the most effective way to get policymakers’ attention. The link below includes step-by-step instructions, phone numbers, and talking points. We welcome you to paraphrase the talking points if that’s easiest!
Tweet your legislators.
Legislators use social media to reach constituents – and we can use it too to tell them what matters to us! We have made it easy for you to tweet at your legislators’ Twitter accounts with a prewritten Tweet. (You can customize the tweet as you see fit.)
Help spread the word
Once you’ve taken action to contact legislators, we encourage you to help us spread the word about the campaign in one of two ways.
1. Follow us on social media and reshare or retweet our posts!
2. Share graphics!
Share one of these three graphics on social media (Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!). Make sure to use the hashtag, #PainCareNeedsMoreOptions!
3. Ask family and friends to participate!
4. Visit our Action Center to stay up-to-date on future advocacy efforts
Why are more pain care options so important?
Here are a five reasons pain care needs more options:
- Everyone’s pain is individual. What helps one person may not help another.
- Combining several modalities is the most effective way to manage chronic pain.
- Different payers cover different modalities so having more options increases the chance the ones that help you could be covered by your insurer.
- Each person has different preferences for the type of treatments they are comfortable trying.
- Side effects to treatments vary greatly from person to person so having more options increase the chances that you will find treatments without unpleasant or detrimental side effects.
More resources
Webinar: On May 18, U.S. Pain hosted a webinar discussing multidisciplinary pain management: what it is, why it is considered best practice, and how one center has implemented this approach with positive results.
- Recording of What is multidisciplinary care? A deeper dive into an integrative example.
HANDOUTS: In 2018, a task force, convened at the request of Congress, and created a 72-page report with recommendations on pain management best practices.
U.S Pain Foundation strongly supports the report that highlights the need for multidisciplinary care. We believe it represents a national blueprint for addressing inadequacies in pain care, and is crucial to improving the lives of the 50 million Americans living with chronic pain.
In conjunction with the report, the task force released several fact sheets and infographics about its recommendations and best practices in pain management. These can be helpful to distribute to policymakers, clinicians, or really anyone with a stake in pain care.
Don’t miss this chance to take action and make multidisciplinary pain care
possible for a greater number of Americans!
This campaign is made possible thanks to funding from our sponsors:
