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IMMEDIATE HEALTH FREEDOM ACTION NEEDED!
PENNSYLVANIA: Pennsylvania H.B. 1717 attempts to criminalize all persons practicing natural health unless they have a medical naturopathic doctor license! On Thursday, January 19, 2012, Pennsylvania House of Representatives is holding a hearing on H.B. 1717, a monopolistic Naturopathic Physician Practice Act mandating licensure of natural health practices with no exemptions for unlicensed traditional naturopaths or complementary and alternative health care practitioners. This hearing was postponed in November 2011 and is now up for hearing on January 19 th. It will be heard in the Committee on Professional Licensure. What you can do : Come to the hearing, call your own Assembly Member and the Committee Members listed below, and Oppose H.B. 1717. Contact legislators by phone, email, or personal letter. Let them know you oppose the bill. What the Bill Does: H.B. 1717 would criminalize practicing anything within the proposed definition of “naturopathic medicine”, regardless of whether it poses a risk of harm to the public. The definition is so broad that it includes many natural therapies such as “…hydrotherapy, topical medicines, foods, food extracts, vitamins, amino acids, minerals, enzymes, dietary supplements, …, homeopathic remedies and plant substances…”. Click here to read the bill: H.B. 1717 w ould criminalize and medicalize the common terms “naturopathy” and “naturopath” and take them out of the public domain and relegate them to a small special group that obtained a special education. Thousands of citizens use the term “naturopath” and practice varying forms of “naturopathic health care” and “naturopathic services” including grandmothers providing “chicken soup” to others. “Naturopathy”, “naturopathic health care” and “naturopathic services” are not the same as “naturopathic medicine” and should not require medical education or state licensure. Coming to the Hearing: Where and When the Bill will be heard: H.B. 1717 is scheduled to be heard in a public hearing on January 19, 2012. The time is 9:30A.M. in Room 60 of the East Wing of the State Capitol Building. People have signed up to testify already and large numbers in the audience are necessary to show support. We will need as many people present as possible to defeat this bill. Contacting Legislators: 1. Distribute Attached One Page Call to Action: Please forward this email to your friends and family to sign the one-page letter (Click here to download one-pager), and send by fax to all the members of the committee listed below. Telephone calls, emails or faxes are extremely important even if you plan to attend the committee hearing. Not everyone will speak during committee so it's important to tell them beforehand. 2. Contact Pennsylvania Committee on Professional Licensure. Call the phone numbers listed below to leave a message with each member of the Professional Licensure Committee or e-mail or fax the attached form letter to the committee. Call from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 8 a.m. to adjournment on Saturdays. The message : “I oppose H.B. 1717 as written – it takes away our right to practice traditional naturopathy and other complementary and alternative health care practices and decreases and jeopardizes consumer options in natural health care. 3. Contact Additional Individual Assembly Members If you write or e-mail , begin your communication with Dear Representative ____________; Include bill number for example: RE: Oppose H.B. 1717. Please take the time to write a personal note on your letter as this will have a greater impact with the legislators. Tell them about your rights as a consumer in Pennsylvania to a free and educated choice in health care providers. Also tell them that you depend on alternative and complementary care for you and your family. Build a relationship with your personal Representative and Senator . Make an appointment, call them, write them and email them, and start building a strong relationship with them. Pennsylvania Health Freedom Local Contact - For more information regarding what you can do, contact Ruth Hoskins at relaxwithruth@gmail.com. Members of Pennsylvania House Professional Licensure Committee:
To send an email to the members whose email addresses are not listed, go to http://www.legis.state.pa.us. Go to the home page for the House, and click on ‘members’. Click on the member’s name and send an email through ‘Contact me’. Share you contact information to get future alerts : Please contact Ruth Hoskins and give her your contact information so you can stay updated concerning the progress of the bill. Email: relaxwithruth@gmail.com ********************* NEW YORK: New York S.B. 3556 and A.B. 5666 would jeopardize your right to speak freely about what you know about nutrients and nutrition without a dietitian license and would limit your access to nutrition information! The bills are monopolistic Dietician and Nutritionist Licensing bills that have been referred to legislative committees in both the New York Senate and the Assembly. S.B. 3556 was introduced in 2011 and passed the Higher Education Committee and the Finance committee but failed to advance in the New York Senate Rules Committee. It has now been assigned to go back to the Senate Higher Education Committee for 2012 session. A.B. 5666 was assigned to the New York Assembly Higher Education Committee in 2011 but it failed to advance. It has now been referred to the Assembly Higher Education Committee for the 2012 session. Click Here to read more for how to take action. What you can do : Call your own Senator and Assembly Member, and the Committee Members listed below, and Oppose S.B. 3556/ A.B. 5666. Contact legislators by phone, email, or personal letter. Let them know you oppose the bill. What the Bill Does: S.B. 3556/ A.B. 5666 provides for licensing persons who practice within a broad definition of dietetics including nutrition therapy and nutrition counseling, nutrition care process, nutrition assessment, nutrition diagnosis, nutrition intervention, and nutrition evaluation and monitoring. The bill then threatens the freedom of speech and right to practice of people who are not licensed by saying that the bill does not apply to them if they are only giving out “general non-medical nutrition information” which the bill defines.The bill also claims to be only a “title bill” criminalizing the unlicensed use of titles, however it has added the prohibitions to practice that all licensing bills have by adding a list of behaviors that exempt a person from the bill, suggesting that the bill in fact does criminalize unlicensed practitioners. Click here to read detailed point by point opposition document of bill language by NHFA and Click here to read A.B. 5666. Contacting Legislators: 1. Send a Call to Action Letter: Sign the one-page action letter (Click here to download) , or your own letter, and send by fax or hard copy to your own Senator and Assembly Members and to all the members of the committees listed below. Telephone calls, emails or faxes are extremely important at this time. 2. Contact directly members of the New York Senate Higher Education Committee and Assembly Higher Education Committee. Call the phone numbers listed below to leave a message with each member of each committee or e-mail or fax the attached action letter or your own letter to each committee. Call from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 8 a.m. to adjournment on Saturdays. The message : “I oppose S.B. 3556/A.B. 5666 as written – it takes away our right to obtain nutrition information from a broad range of choices and it jeopardizes free speech about foods and nutrition drastically decreasing and jeopardizing consumer options in natural health care. 3. When Contacting Your Own and other Individual Senators and Assembly Members If you write or e-mail , begin your communication with Dear Representative ____________; Include bill number for example: RE: Please Oppose S.B.3556/A.B. 5666. Please take the time to write a personal note on your letter as this will have a greater impact with the legislators. Tell them about your rights as a consumer in New York to a free and educated choice in health care providers. Also tell them that you depend on a broad range of information on nutrition and alternative and complementary care for you and your family. Build a relationship with your personal Senate and Assembly Representatives . Make an appointment, call them, write them and email them, and start building a strong relationship with them. New York Health Freedom Local Contact: For more information regarding what you can do, contact Emily Warner Email: egwarner@gmail.com To find out who your personal representatives are, please do the following: for your Assembly representative, go to http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?sh=search, enter your address, city, and zip code and click ‘submit’; for your Senator, go to http://www.nysenate.gov/senators and in the upper left of the page, under “Find my Senator”, enter your street address and zip code and click ‘submit.’ Members of New York Assembly Higher Education Committee:
Note: To send an email to the Assembly members whose email addresses are not listed, go to http://assembly.state.ny.us/comm/?sec=mem&id=20, and click on the member’s name. From the member’s home page, click the ‘contact’ tab and send an email through ‘Contact me’. To send a letter to an Assembly member, write to: 188 State Street, Legislative Office Building, Albany, NY 12247. Members of New York Senate Higher Education Committee:
Note: To send an email to the Senators whose email addresses are not listed, go to http://www.nysenate.gov/committee/higher-education, click on the senator’s name and send an email through ‘Contact me’. To send a letter to a Senator, write to: 188 State Street, Legislative Office Building, Albany, NY 12247. |
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