I spent this week in Washington, D.C. for the American College of Physicians' Leadership Day on Capitol Hill. I went as part of the Georgia delegation and met with staff from both sides of the aisle to talk about issues that affect our patients and our profession.

The day before

The Hill day did not start cold. The day before, ACP put us through a full schedule of speakers, briefings, and breakout sessions to get us ready. We heard from ACP leadership, policy staff, and seasoned advocates who walked us through the bills, the politics around them, and how to actually run a fifteen-minute meeting with a congressional staffer. We also got time with delegates from other states, attendings, residents, and medical students who came in from all over the country. Comparing notes with a med student from the Midwest and a hospitalist from the Northeast about what they were seeing in their hospitals was, by itself, worth the trip. By the time we walked out of the prep day, the asks felt rehearsed and the nerves were mostly gone.

We also heard from Rep. Raul Ruiz, M.D. (CA-25) that morning, who shared the inspiring story of how he got to where he is today. He grew up in Coachella, California, the son of farmworkers. He graduated magna cum laude from UCLA and then went to Harvard, where he earned an M.D., a Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School, and a Master of Public Health, the first Latino to earn three graduate degrees from Harvard. He trained in emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, returned home to practice in the same valley he grew up in, started a pre-medical mentorship pipeline for local kids, and flew to Haiti within days of the 2010 earthquake to serve as a medical director on the ground. He was elected to Congress in 2012 and has been there since. A physician from a farmworker family speaking to a room full of doctors as a sitting member of Congress was a useful reminder that the path from the bedside to the policy table is not theoretical. People do walk it.

The asks

ACP sent us in with three priorities. They were specific, bipartisan, and easy to explain in the ten or fifteen minutes a congressional staffer typically gives you.

1. The REDI Act (H.R. 2028 / S. 942). Interest-free deferment on federal student loans during medical and dental residency. Residents are working full-time taking care of patients while their loans quietly grow. This one is personal for almost everyone in training.
2. The Protecting Free Vaccines Act (H.R. 5448 / S. 2857). Protects access to well-established vaccines without cost-sharing. Patients should not have to choose between a copay and a flu shot.
3. The Provider Reimbursement Stability Act of 2026 (H.R. 8163). A bipartisan fix to the annual Medicare fee schedule cuts driven by budget neutrality. Practices, especially small and rural ones like many in South Georgia, cannot keep absorbing year-over-year reductions.

The day itself

We met with Sen. Warnock's office, Sen. Ossoff's office, and Reps. Nikema Williams, Austin Scott, Lucy McBath, and Rick Allen. We did a drop-off at Rep. Brian Jack's office. Rep. Scott represents my district (GA-08), so that meeting felt closest to home.

What surprised me was how much of the work is just showing up. Staffers are young, smart, and busy. They take notes. They ask sharp questions. Many of them had never spoken to a physician outside their own family doctor. Being in the room as the person who actually rounds on Medicare patients in Valdosta made the asks land differently than a one-pager in an inbox.

‹›

What I took home

• Advocacy is part of the job. Policy is upstream of every discharge plan I write. If I do not speak up about it, somebody else will speak for my patients, and they may not get it right.
• Bipartisan framing works. None of the three asks were partisan. Loan deferment, vaccine access, and stable Medicare payments are physician and patient issues. Walking into a Republican office and a Democratic office with the same three asks, and getting genuine engagement in both, was a good reminder of that.
• Local stories beat national statistics. What moved staffers was a specific patient or a specific clinic, not the 163,000-member talking point. I leaned on what I see in our hospital in Valdosta, and that is what they wrote down.
• The Georgia ACP delegation is a good group to learn from. Rounding with more senior colleagues who have been making these asks for thirty years gave me a template I can use for the next thirty.
• Get involved. If you are a colleague reading this and have not yet plugged into advocacy, consider this your invitation. Join the ACP's advocacy efforts at acponline.org/advocacy — sign up for action alerts, follow the policy briefings, and find your way to a Hill day. There is room at the table for more of us.

Thanks

Thank you to SGMC Health for supporting my participation, and to the American College of Physicians for organizing the day and giving residents a seat at the table. It is one thing to read about a bill in the morning report; it is another to ask a senator's office to put their name on it. I came home tired, sore-footed, and convinced this is worth doing every year I can.