American Academy of Family Physicians
This organization represents about 100,000 family physicians, family medicine residents and medical students.

What They Want
The AAFP has formally endorsed both the House bill and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, the two pieces of legislation that have so far left committee. The group supports these pieces of legislation because of they include provisions that will expand coverage, primary care access and the primary care work force.

The group reports that 70 percent of doctors in the U.S. are specialized, while internationally the breakdown is split 50-50 between primary care and specialized physicians. The group sees a need for a more even health care field, which it believes can happen through reform legislation.

To expand the primary care work force, the AAFP wants to see incentives put in place to draw more physicians into the primary care field, such as increasing payments for primary care services as well as scholarships and loan assistance for medical students.

"It's a terrible problem that's developing and that's already developed in terms of a work force imbalance," said Ted Epperly, AAFP's president and a family physician in Boise, Idaho. "If we don't have the right type of doctors for [people] to go to, then we won't be able to improve their health."

The group also supports a focus on prevention and insurance reforms that will eliminate coverage denials based on health status and variable rates based on gender and age. The AAFP would also like to see tort reform included in the discussion, though such measures aren't currently included in proposed legislation.

Deal Breakers
The AAFP isn't drawing any "lines in the sand" on particular issues, Epperly said, but certain provisions, most predominantly the public option, are contentious among members. Epperly said the AAFP supports the public option "in concept," assuming it does not lead to "an unfair playing field" and is not based on Medicare payment rates.

How Much They've Spent
In the first six months of 2009, the AAFP spent about $1.5 million on lobbying activities, compared to $2.3 million in the first six months of 2008, according to lobbying disclosure forms.

The AAFP's PAC has donated $237,000 to federal candidates and committees during the 2010 election cycle, including both parties' congressional and senatorial campaign committees, according to Federal Election Commission records. During the 2008 election cycle, the group's PAC donated $745,500 to federal candidates and committees. Of donations to candidates, 73 percent have gone to Democrats this cycle and 66 percent went to Democrats in the 2008 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The group has run print ads in national and D.C.-based newspapers and is a part of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, the National Coalition on Health Care and Health Care for America Now, all coalitions that have spent money advocating for reform.

The AAFP's total revenue for fiscal year 2008 was $77.4 million, according to IRS forms.

Key Players
Epperly (right), the AAFP's president, has visited D.C. 12 times this year to advocate for health care reform. Three of those visits included meetings at the White House, and in June he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.

"We'll roll up our shirtsleeves and do everything possible to make [health care reform] work because it is the right thing to do," he told President Obama at the White House reform summit in March. "We need to fix the workforce, sir, so that all those patients have a place to go."

Individual members of the AAFP have also contacted their representatives as part of the group's grassroots efforts.

The group's CEO, Douglas Henley, and Epperly are not registered lobbyists. Rosemarie Sweeney, AAFP's vice president for public policy and practice support, leads the AAFP's team of six registered lobbyists.

Links
AAFP Health Care Page
AAFP's Heal Health Care Now