Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (OAFP) advocacy team monitors healthcare related legislation, rule changes, and legislative updates for Ohio’s family physicians.
To access the OAFP Bill Tracker, visit the OAFP Public Policy webpage and click on the Bill Tracker icon.
Read on for this week’s updates and contact Advocacy Coordinator Kaela Springhetti with questions or for ways to get involved.
Federal Legislative Updates from the AAFP
SUPPORT Act (HR 2483) Signed Into Law; AAFP Accredited Training Now Compliant with the MATE Act
On December 1, President Trump signed the SUPPORT Act (HR 2483) into law. The legislation, also known as the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act, reauthorizes key prevention, treatment, and recovery programs for patients with substance use disorder (SUD). It also includes programs to support the behavioral health workforce. The new law also corrects a very important error in the 2023 MATE Act that failed to include American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) accredited training as compliant with new training requirements for prescribers of controlled substances in schedule II, III, IV, and V.
The AAFP has spent the past two years urging Congress to pass this correction so that trained family physicians can continue to provide timely, undisrupted treatment to their patients, including those with SUD.
CMS Announced New Payment Model Called ACCESS
The Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model tests an outcome-aligned payment approach in Original Medicare to expand access to new technology-supported care options that help people improve their health and prevent and manage chronic disease. The voluntary model focuses on conditions affecting more than two-thirds of people with Medicare, including high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic musculoskeletal pain, and depression. It will run for 10 years beginning Wednesday, July 1, 2026.
The AAFP’s Regulatory team and Practice Advancement staff have been studying the model to understand the potential benefits or other impacts to our members. Stay tuned for more information.
Ohio Budget Includes $5M to Help Fund Pediatric Cancer Research
Source: Statehouse News Bureau
Five institutions researching pediatric cancer will get $5 million in state funds to help with their work. The grants come from the budget that was signed this summer.
“The money itself is important,” said Governor Mike DeWine in announcing the grants at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH. “But I think it’s also important that we say as a state that medical research for children—in this case, medical research for children’s cancer, is vitally important. And we all must, whether we’re in the private sector or in the public sector, we all must do more to have more money available for that life-saving research.”
Over 500 Ohio kids are diagnosed with cancer each year. Richard Wilson, executive director of the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said while 22% of the U.S. population is under 18, less than 4% of the National Institutes of Health budget goes to pediatric research.
“Children are not just little adults. And many of the discoveries that we have made over the past 25 years to understand adult cancers and the impact has been tremendous. But they’re not always directly relevant to the detection and understanding of pediatric cancer,” Wilson said.
He added, “Many conditions are rare and impact few children. Thus, there’s kind of a limited market for the development of new treatment options by pharmaceutical companies. So that’s why funding like this is so vital to our patients and to our, our research and our ability to really improve situation for kids who are diagnosed with cancer.”
The money will go to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the Cleveland Clinic, Dayton Children’s Hospital, and Maple Tree Cancer Alliance in Cedarville, OH.
Read the full article in the Statehouse News Bureau.
Bipartisan U.S. House Group Still Working on Extending Enhanced ACA Subsidies
Source: Health Policy Institute of Ohio
Republicans and Democrats released a two-year plan to scale back and extend expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, but it faces long odds in the GOP-led House (Source: Bipartisan House Group Proposes Long-Shot Health Care Plan, New York Times, December 4, 2025).
A group of 35 House Republicans and Democrats recently released a plan to scale back and extend for two years the Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, a long-shot effort to address soaring health care premiums.
According to analysis by KFF, ACA marketplace premiums are expected to more than double next year if the enhanced premiums are not extended.
The plan has the backing of roughly 15 Republicans—far short of the “majority of the majority” that has become the standard level of support needed to compel House leadership to allow a bill to receive a floor vote.
With enhanced health insurance tax credits set to expire at the end of the month, Democrats have been intensifying pressure on Republicans to join them in backing an extension, their chief demand in the government shutdown fight that ended without any action to address the issue.
As part of its Healthcare Access and Affordability in Ohio series, HPIO recently released a policy explainer on changes to the federal health insurance marketplace.
AAFP Speak Out Opportunities
Source: The American Academy of Family Physicians
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Speak Out tool enables you to directly contact your state officials, members of Congress, or the Office of the President on the issues that matter most to primary care.
- Speak Out: Urge Congress Strengthening Medicare for Patients and Providers Act
- Speak Out: Tell Your Lawmakers to Support Pro-Primary Care Reforms in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
- Speak Out: Support H-1B Physicians
- Speak Out: Urge Congress to Protect PSLF for Family Physicians
- Speak Out: Tell Congress to Extend ACA Tax Credits
- Speak Out: Oppose ECAPS Act and Protect Physician-Led Primary Care
- Speak Out: Secure Long-Term Funding for THCGME, CHCs, and NHSC
- Speak Out: Make Telehealth Flexibilities Permanent
- Speak Out: Strengthen Funding for Primary Care Priorities
- Speak Out: Defend Vaccine Science and Public Health
- Speak Out: Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Reauthorization Act
- Speak Out: Tell Congress to Support Direct Primary Care.
Learn more about advocating for family medicine.