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To:
All interested parties
From:
Mike Causey, CHF Executive Director
Date: October 2, 2007
Re: CHF Legislative Update
This is an update on the status of our legislation in the General Assembly: House Bill 1358 - The Consumer Health Freedom Act
- was introduced earlier this year in the 2007-2008 session. The bill
has not come to the floor for a vote yet and the legislature has
adjourned for this year, but the legislation may be considered in the
short session, which begins May 2008. This is an important piece of
legislation for consumers interested in unrestricted access to
alternative healthcare and natural healing therapies.
The
primary reason we have not been able to move this bill forward is
because we haven’t had the financial resources or the "large numbers"
of people involved at the grassroots level to make this issue a
"priority issue" with our NC legislators. In order to achieve our goal
of passing a North Carolina Health Freedom Act - or simply put, to
ensure access to alternative healthcare practitioners, we need to get
more people involved in CHF and raise the funds to carry out our
legislative and association efforts over the coming months and years.
Without
CHF working in support of alternative healthcare in NC, the opponents
of alternative would no doubt put the entire scope of anything related
to "natural health," "alternative healthcare" or "complementary
healthcare" totally under the jurisdiction of the NC Medical Society.
Stated in dollar terms, it takes $25,000 to $30,000 per year to fund a
minimal lobbying effort. A major lobbying effort can cost well in
excess of $100,000 per year. Some groups, such as the Medical Society
(MD’s) spend millions on lobbying efforts. We can’t even think about
what is spent by some groups opposed to natural health access, but we
can achieve great success if we can raise enough money to cover our
legislative lobbying expenses. This has to be a priority for us!
Also,
we need to get as many signatures on our petition for HB 1358 as we can
as soon as we can to demonstrate a grassroots interest in allowing for
healthcare freedoms for all our citizens.
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