Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) will offer on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 before the Senate Finance Committee, the ASC legislation (S.1884). We need your action today to contact your Senator, who sits on the Finance Committee, to offer their support for Senator Crapo’s legislation. Please act today to follow the instructions below to contact your Senator who sits on the Senate Finance Committee.

Click here to find your Senator on the Senate Finance Committee

Earlier this month we asked you to take action to ask your US Representative to co sponsor “The Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment Modernization Act,” (HR 4042 introduced by Representative Wally Herger (R-Ca) in the House of Representative). Senator Crapo (R-ID) has introduced identical legislation in the Senate and we need your immediate help to ask your Senator to cosponsor S1884.

This legislation would accomplish a number of very important objectives. It will eliminate the ASC procedures list and replace it instead with a much narrower list of procedures which cannot be performed in ASCs. The bill will link ASC payment rates to 75% of the rates paid to hospital outpatient departments for the same services. And, in order to ensure stability in the industry as the new system is implemented, the legislation will phase in the new payment program over four years and incorporate special payment rules to avoid disruptive cuts in payments. A detailed summary of our legislation can be reviewed by clicking here

It is imperative that you, your medical staffs, and your employees contact your Senator today and ask them to cosponsor our legislation. We are providing you with all the tools to accomplish this task as painlessly and effortlessly as possible.

This link will take you to the letter writing section of the ASC Advocacy Center website as we have preloaded your email and a standard password to get you past the registration stage.

Please be sure to add information about your center in the preloaded letter before sending.

If you want to go back to the ASC Advocacy website at any time (the ASC Advocacy Center is a great resource for looking up information about federal and state elected officials) and need to go through the registration process, then simply enter your email address into "user name" and enter AAASC into "password". You can also go to "My Account" on the website and change your email address preference and password.

If you want to send information on the ASC Advocacy Center to someone else in your office or in another ASC, please be careful because using the link above will allow the person to send emails to federal and state officials using your name and contact information. INSTEAD, feel free to give them the following link http://vocusgr.vocus.com/GRSPACE 2/webpub/aaasc/Login.asp?LoginXSL=Login and invite them to register - it is really simple and fast and is open to anyone in the ASC industry. Then they can utilize the ASC Advocacy Center any time they want and not utilize your personal preferences.