Finding Mr. Wright

At a dinner party at his home, Frank Lloyd Wright asked to hear a Mozart piece played for a fourth time, much to the dismay of the guests. A family member threw up her hands and said “Please, not again.” The renowned architect smiled and said, “Nothing will ever change if you don't ask.”

We, as an industry, are sitting in an arena facing another round of actions by Congress that will be painful to bear, and it's time we went to Congress and said “not again.”

We are an industry of good people, running good businesses and providing great care and service to millions of patients, yet we are singled out routinely as shysters, con men and crooks. We are the first, and ironically the smallest, piece of the health care system that is targeted for cuts and other adverse action by Congress whenever it wants to find money to offset some other pork barrel project. The question is, why us?

The answer is really not that hard. We, as businesses and as an industry, simply sit in our chairs and wait for someone else to do something, or worse, we just wait for the tide to go out hoping we'll still be afloat. Mr. Wright hit us dead on. Nothing will ever change if we don't ask, but we just keep sitting in our chairs.

So the next question is, what can we do? Again, that answer is not hard. We have to get politically involved, and I mean really involved, not just talk. Every DME owner has to become his own advocate and lobbyist. Every owner, not just the big ones or the progressive ones or the national ones — every one.

We will call just about anyone who will listen in order to complain about what's happening, but we won't call a congressman to say “not again.” We will give money to all kinds of charities, but we won't give money to a political campaign. We will spend hundreds of dollars to attend meetings and seminars to hear the same bad news, but we won't drive a few miles to meet with our representatives. If we expect to stay in business, we had better get into politics.

The next statement from most providers, small or large, is a series of excuses. “Well, I don't know what to say,” or “I'll say something wrong,” or “I feel intimidated,” or “I'm so small it won't make any difference.” Wrong! You are the most powerful person in the world when it comes to the ballot box. You are a vote. More specifically, you are 10 votes. That's the way every congressman looks at every person who contacts them.