As a constituent, I am urging you to pass the HEROES Act. The provisions I find most important are:
- Providing additional emergency funding to help struggling physician practices keep their doors open by partially offsetting revenue losses and increased expenses relative to COVID-19;
- Making improvements in the Medicare Accelerated and Advance Payment Program;
- Making physicians eligible for hazard pay as essential frontline workers;
- Supporting the COVID-19 response workforce by expediting visas for international medical graduates (IMGs) to enter the U.S. for training and patient care, permanently authorizing the Conrad 30 Program, and providing a pathway for IMGs and their families already in the U.S to obtain permanent residency status;
- Expanding coverage and increases federal funding for Medicaid; and
- Funding the infrastructure and health system capacity needed to rapidly expand testing and contact-tracing, thereby enabling economic, social and medical care activities to gradually resume on a prioritized basis while mitigating transmission and deaths from COVID-19.
Pass this important legislation to keep our first responders healthy and safe.