The ACC Political Action Committee board met this past weekend in San Diego to plan our strategy over 2011 and beyond. President Ralph Brindis, Past President Fred Bove, and I joined ACC SVP of Advocacy Jim Fasules and his team and the PAC board in the discussions. Chair Bo Walpole noted that the PAC finally reached the $1 million level this year, putting us in the top ten of the professional PACs, which is good given that the PAC is only been around since 2002. That said, we bet correctly on 83% of the political races we invested in.

ACC’s PAC is somewhat unique in focusing very much on ways to improve cardiovascular quality of care. The board is very clear that whatever we endorse or invest in must meet the standard that it is in the best interest of patients, science, and improved patient care, whether that be Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever. We focus our efforts on lawmakers and candidates who are in a position to impact our members and the care they provide. We used our influence to encourage Democratic leadership in the last 2 years to create health legislation that met these goals. We are now going to focus on the new Republican House leadership on developing ideas about what they want to propose to solve our nation’s health problems, rather than just opposing what’s on the table. We have solutions in hand in terms of reducing unnecessary spending and improving quality of care at the same time.

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