Drs. Meadows, DuBuske, Rathkopf, Mahr, Tracy, Sublett, and Miller
Last week, a group of ACAAI members traveled to Washington D.C. for the College’s annual 2025 Advocacy Strike Force on Capitol Hill. This visit to our nation’s capital is an opportunity for the College to educate Congress members about our advocacy priorities and build relationships with legislators who can help make our priorities a reality.
Participating in this year’s Strike Force were ACAAI President Dr. James Tracy, Advocacy Council Chair Dr. Travis Miller, Advocacy Council Vice Chair Dr. Wesley Sublett, Executive Medical Director Dr. Todd Mahr, Executive Director of Advocacy and Government Affairs Dr. Allen Meadows, Annals Editor Dr. Mitch Grayson, and Drs. Purvi Parikh, Melinda Rathkopf, and Lawrence DuBuske. The participants were supported by ACAAI’s legislative government relations consultants Matt Reiter and Luke Schwartz from Capitol Associates.
The Strike Force schedule featured 25 meetings with Congressional offices and key committees with jurisdiction over our priorities. With a focus on the day-to-day issues that impact allergists’ ability to practice medicine and provide care to patients. This year’s advocacy topics included improving Medicare payments to physicians by applying an annual inflationary update to physician Medicare payments, reducing administrative burdens from commercial payers such as prior authorization, PBM reform and preserving NIH research funding. There is optimism that Congress will turn to many of these issues after finishing work on the budget reconciliation bill that is currently consuming most of their time on Capitol Hill.
In addition to those topics, the Strike Force placed a major emphasis on asking Congress to support our efforts to pursue changes to how Medicare and commercial payers reimburse CPT code 95165. Medicare does not use the CPT definition of “dose” that is used to determine how to bill CPT code 95165. Recently, many commercial payers, such as UnitedHealth Care (UHC), are adopting the Medicare definition. This is problematic because the Medicare definition results in lower payments for this code. The College is attempting to work directly with Medicare and UHC.
This year’s Strike Force identified many new Congressional allies who are willing to support our efforts to ask Medicare and commercial payers to use the CPT definition. UHC has come under increasing scrutiny due to last year’s Change Healthcare cyberattack, its Medicare Advantage profits and its anti-competitive practices. The CPT 95165 reimbursement issue gives these offices a new angle to consider as it scrutinizes UHC and other payers.
The biggest Congressional champion for this issue is Rep. Bob Onder, MD (R-MO-03), an allergist and ACAAI Fellow. Having an allergist in Congress fighting for our specialty at this critical time is an enormous advantage. Our group had a private breakfast with Rep. Onder to discuss this and other important issues for our specialty. We are eager to work with Rep. Onder to advance his important work in Congress.
Strike Force Members, along with former ACAAI Alliance President Mrs. Charlotte Meadows, with Rep. Dr. Bob Onder (far right)
The Strike Force members also participated in the Allergy and Asthma Network’s (AAN) Capitol Hill Day Day, which always occurs on World Asthma Day and is a special opportunity for patients and physicians to unite in their advocacy on important issues to make care more affordable and accessible to allergy and asthma patients. The Strike Force doctors were also joined by ACAAI House of Delegates Speaker Dr. Andrej Petrov and Dr. Amar Dixit.
The group participated in an additional 30 meetings with AAN. The AAN advocacy meetings bring patients, physicians and advocates together to support issues that improve care accessibility and affordability for allergy and asthma patients. AAN presented Dr. Tracy with an award in recognition of our long-standing partnership with AAN. In his remarks, Dr. Tracy emphasized how much the College values our partnership and praised the important role patients play in advocating on these issues.
ACAAI President Dr. Jim Tracy receives an award from AAN
in recognition of our long-standing partnership.
Dr. Tracy gave additional remarks during the AAN Advocacy Breakfast, and Dr. Miller presented on the College’s advocacy efforts during the AAN Capitol Hill Briefing. Drs. Meadows and Miller also participated in a panel discussion during the AAN Capitol Hill briefing to discuss the importance of Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) reform for patient access. PBMs can restrict access to medication through formulary decisions and can delay access to prescriptions through prior authorization and step therapy requirements. PBM reform is one of the most bipartisan issues in Congress. We are hopeful that Congress passes a PBM reform bill this year.
Drs. DuBuske, Meadows, Petrov, Congressman David Valadao (R-CA-22), co-chair of the Congressional Allergy and Asthma Caucus, Drs. Rathkopf, Miller, Sublett, and Dixit
The College’ advocacy work does not stop after the Strike Force participants return home. Our advocacy team will be hard at work following up on our action items from these important meetings. We encourage College members to read the weekly Advocacy Insider articles to stay up to date on our advocacy work.
Read more and view the 2025 Strike Force gallery page.
The Advocacy Council – ADVOCATING FOR ALLERGISTS AND THEIR PATIENTS.
