Given today’s technology, one wonders what path a constituent’s correspondence takes. Each Member of the House represents 710,000 constituents. Senators’ numbers are a bit different… Since TWO SENATORS represent a state and the most populous state is CALF with 40 million and then there is little old Wyoming with a 589,000 population.
There may be exceptions, but normally I read about a constituent contacting someone in Congress about denial of chronic pain meds .. only to get back a letter discussing what is being done in fighting the opiate crisis.
I think that it would be interested to see a study on what the constituent correspondence asks and what comes back.. I suspect that we know the answer.. without a study.
Correspondence could take one of two paths… gets scanned into a computer and the computer looks for “key words” in the text and generates a “form letter” based on the key words. Or the same task is done manually using office staff.. to pick the form letter and/or choosing specific form paragraphs to compose a return letter.
In turn, there is data on a spread sheet collected based on the key words for the member of Congress to review. So that they can be “in-sync” with his/her constituent’s concerns.
IF you pay attention to what “big business” does to get things their way on the hill… they hire lobbyists… who does their lobbying IN PERSON.. Many lobbyist firms will generate proposed bills and presents them to member of Congress and ask them to sponsor the bill.
Maybe the chronic pain community needs to come up a “proposed bill” to benefit those in the chronic pain community and ask – IN PERSON – various members of Congress to sponsor/co-sponsor the bill.
May be a better outcome, than what has been done in the past… ?
Filed under: General Problems
I live 4-5 hours away from Washington. Part of the plan of making DoctorsofCourage a membership site was to provide me with finances to be a lobbyist in Washington. But right now, 2 months after starting, I have 6 paying members. Pretty shabby support from people whose lives are in the balance.
I have tried to get into see my Senator, my Representative on the federal level and my senator on the state level. All to no avail. I can’t even get a response of no. My letters and phone calls remain ignored. It seems they only represent big buck lobbyists.
Lobbyists have mega bucks backing them. They wine and dine politicians. Among other things.
Given the cost to the government for treatment and the deaths from overdoses. Any politician that supported increasing access to opiates for any reason. Would be committing political suicide. Other politicians would not join or support his or her efforts.
saying NO to a chronic pain pts about support a bill.. if the chronic pain community would organize .. could be political suicide as well… In the typical election a 5%-10% change in the vote could change the outcome
Which is why the Federal Government should be legally sued for torture and genocide of the medically ill via complete corruption, violation of many laws the founded this country,,,But if the federal government was actually sued,,in a court of law,,,this would stop this literal torturing to death the medically ill..It would expose all the corruption, all the lieful data,all of it to the American people,,,that would stop all of this,,,and should be done asap,,maryw
Pss,,I find it very very telling,,u state the ,”cost,” to the government when the government is THE VERY REASON FOR THE COST…The government came after us,,,not thee other way around..The government came after the medically ill being prescribe a lawful MEDICINE by lawful doctors,,They had 1 incident in Florida were 2 corrupt idiots abused the honorable field of Pain Management,,and it snowballed from their into this ,”witch hunt,” we have today..10,000 of CPP’s saw their Doc 1nce a year,,the deductible,,,costing the government nothing,,The Government endorced b.s. data and trump up charges,,but moved our MEDICINE up to a class 2,,for bigger felony charges on our doctors..Doctors got terrified of its own government,,Started dropping their patients like flies,,or giving them 1 option,,rehab,,thus again,,the government fault for ANY COST not ours,,and certainly not a medicine called opiates,,U seem to have your ,’ideas,” backwards Hope,,mary