Friday, August 18, 2017

Take Action Now to Restore ME/CFS Funding at CDC

CDC Headquarters in Georgia
Most Americans with ME/CFS and other chronic illnesses breathed a big sigh of relief this month when Congress' efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) failed, and we will - for now - hang onto our rights as those with pre-existing conditions and retain some (though not perfect) access to health insurance.

You can't breathe easy yet, though, because we now have another, familiar threat to ME/CFS in the federal government: the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS zeroed out the $5.4 million line item for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at the CDC....again. Yup, that's right, even that meager and insufficient little $5 million we get for research in the CDC (far, far below what other similar diseases get) is in danger of being yanked away completely. If this seems familiar to you, it's because this happened exactly 2 years ago, in August 2015, and ME/CFS patients and advocates spoke up and successfully got our little $5 million reinstated to the budget.

So, it is time once again for your voices to be heard! No need to run to the rooftops and shout, "We Are Here! We Are Here!" - unlike the Whos, we have the internet.

Just take a few minutes to fill out this quick form and hit send, and an e-mail letter will be sent to your Congressional reps. I just did it, and it took me 5 minutes from start to finish (and I added a fairly detailed message about our family and dozens of other families locally).

Use this link from Solve ME/CFS to send your message NOW, while we still have a chance to get this reversed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might want to change the photo. What you have posted is NIH, not CDC.

Sue Jackson said...

I know! I didn't think anyone would notice! I had a pic of NIH and no energy to go searching for a CDC one.