SB 5704 Dies in Committee - We thank You for Your Support

Unfortunately, SB 5704 ARNP reimbursement died in the Senate Ways and Means Committee today.  Your response to our request for messages to committee members was an important part of our efforts to have a hearing scheduled.  Despite all our efforts and the request of many senators and agency officials, we were unable to secure a hearing today which was the deadline to enable a bill to be voted out of committee on Monday.

ARNPs United of Washington State thanks each of you for your efforts.  We thank Senator Emily Randall for serving as prime sponsor of the bill and Sen. Annette Cleveland for leadership in passing the bill out of the Health and Long Term Care Committee. We thank Devon Connor-Green for his outstanding lobbying and ability to build a broad coalition of organizations to support the bill,  We thank Dr. Ben Danielson for his authorship of a Seattle Times op-ed article. We thank AANP for sending alerts to all of its Washington Members.  We thank all of the senators who sponsored the bill and those who voted in the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee to support the bill and move it forward to the Ways and Means Committee.  We also thank Governor Inslee for his support of the bill and need for an additional budget allocation not in his budget to the legislature last fall. And my thanks to the ARNPs United Board of Directors and Legislative Committee for their hard work on this bill. 

We are not defeated, just delayed. We are already planning our strategy for next year.  Until then, there is more work to be done in the legislature.  We'll continue to send you updates and ask you to continue to engage with us on our legislative efforts. Please consider joining as a member if you are not already and please renew when your membership expires.  We need each of you to contribute to keep ARNPs United financially strong to be able to get ARNP reimbursement legislation passed to keep practices financially strong and able to provide access to care for all residents of our state.