Urge Congress to Support Hospitals in Continued Fight Against COVID-19

With both the delta and omicron variants exerting tremendous strain on our health care system, we are calling on Congress to include a number of key priorities to support hospitals and caregivers as part of a must-pass legislative package next month. Congress must pass legislation by Feb. 18 to fund the government, and additional COVID-19 relief funding may be included as part of the package.

The AHA recently sent a letter to congressional leaders outlining our key priorities. These include:

•  Disbursing quickly the remaining dollars in the Provider Relief Fund and adding $25 billion to the fund;
• Extending the Medicare sequester relief until the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency or Dec. 31, 2022, whichever is later;
• Giving hospitals more time to repay payments received through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Accelerated and Advance Payments Programs; and
• Providing relief for any hospitals participating in the 340B Drug Pricing Program that had to leave the program due to changes in their patient mix as a result of the pandemic.

We have created fact sheets with more details on each of these issues for you to use in your advocacy efforts. Links to those fact sheets are included above.

SAMPLE MESSAGES AND DIGITAL RESOURCES

Please contact your senators and representatives today and urge them to include our key priorities in upcoming legislation. We have developed sample messages that you can customize and use to easily contact your lawmakers. In addition, we have created a new digital toolkit that you can use and share to help amplify the messages on social media.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

If you have questions, please contact AHA at 800-424-4301.