The Clinton Health-Care Initiative taught us that our splendid isolation could mean extinction. We would have lost our ability to have a private relationship with a patient outside the proposed monolithic governmental system. Now we are again facing an issue of the same magnitude, with the potential to destroy the most important condition needed for effective psychoanalysis — privacy. Each member of the American is needed to help put a human face on the privacy debate for members of Congress at the American's May meeting in Washington.
As you know, Congress has set itself the deadline of August 1999 to write legislation on the privacy of medical information. The Jeffords-Dodd Bill (S. 578, the Health Care Personal Information Nondisclosure Act of 1999, also known as the Health Care Personal Information Nondisclosure (PIN) Act) and the Leahy Bill (S. 573, the Medical Information Privacy and Security Act), with its House companion Bill, H.R. 1057, put forward by Rep. Edward D. Markey (D-Mass.), were all introduced on March 10, 1999. Several other bills dealing with medical information privacy will be introduced by May.
As chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee, Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-Vt.) will schedule and control the Senate committee's hearings and thus will significantly drive the direction of
Deborah C. Peel, M.D., is president-elect of the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians, a member of the Committee on Governmental Relations and Insurance, a consultant to the Joint Committee on Government Relations for the American Psychiatric Association, and co-chair of Psych-Grassroots (an e-mail legislative alert system for national mental health issues).
the public policy debate on this issue. In the House, the Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health and Environment, chaired by Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.), will be the place where privacy legislation will be considered.
Several bills are now before Congress, which will have only eighty days left to pass legislation by the time of the American's May meeting in Washington.
This is where you come in. We need each of you to visit your senators, representatives, and their staffs about these critical matters. Most members of Congress and their staffs have never met a psychoanalyst. Our public image is negative. By making the effort to meet these people and explain the need to protect privacy in human terms, you can have a powerful effect on the course of this legislation and begin to rehabilitate the way our profession is seen by the outside world.
The political action forum scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, May 11–12 (or Tuesday and Thursday, May 11 and 13), is designed to give you a thorough grounding in the current issues and bills affecting psychoanalysis that have come before Congress. We will prepare you to make cogent presentations about these issues. The training sessions will be held Tuesday afternoon, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and on Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Wednesday agenda will be repeated on Thursday. We will also take you inside a congressional office, not literally but by using mock visits, to help you develop empathy and knowledge of how politicians and their busy staffs work. We plan a stimulating, interactive, and informative agenda to help you get inside the political process of advocacy. Our goal is to make you comfortable and effective as an advocate.
During the forum, you will have the opportunity to hear and talk with some of the key legislators and policymakers involved with these issues. You will meet our government relations consultant, Judi Buckalew, and psychoanalysts who have been working on politics and public affairs at the state and national level. We will help you find out how rewarding it is to be able to help our patients not only in our offices but also by advocating for public policy to protect their interests. Joe Gagan, a national expert in legislative education for the medical community, will run the Wednesday and Thursday morning sessions. After the training and the visits to congressional offices, we will de-brief you and collect written notes detailing your contacts and impressions, before our final group discussion at the conclusion of the forum.
We need to know that you are coming, so we can help you schedule visits with your members of Congress. Please call Tina Faison at 212-752-0450, extension 23, to request a registration form. An analyst with legislative experience can even go with you on your Hill visits. Please seriously consider becoming a part of our political advocacy team. It is hard to envision political issues more critical to our profession than those before us at the moment. If you are devoted to psychoanalysis, it is time to put your money where your mouth is and join us in working to protect the most important condition for psychoanalytic treatment — privacy.