News from the APA Grassroots Advocacy Network: Telehealth Updates, Student Loan Updates, Other Federal Advocacy

APA provided some recent updates on their advocacy efforts that are relevant to KPA members. I've attached the APA update from November 10 which highlights Medicare reimbursement rates for the coming year and includes the full text of a message from APA's CEO, Dr. Arthur C. Evans, about student loans below. From Dr. Evans:

"I am pleased to share some very exciting news with you that greatly impacts the future of our profession and discipline. As many of you know, H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law over the summer, touched upon various policies of importance to psychology, including substantial changes to federal student loan programs that many of our students depend upon to finance their education. The law established new student loan caps for post-baccalaureate study, delineating between graduate and professional programs, the latter of which provides a substantially higher loan cap and is limited to programs that require licensure. In partnership with many of you, our advocacy and policy team spent months working with Congress to mitigate negative impact from some of the proposals being considered and to ensure that the loan limits that were included in the law were robust enough to support most of our psychology students. Once the bill passed, the Department of Education was responsible for implementing these provisions and, most importantly, determining which programs would be designated as a ‘professional degree.’ Since mid-August, the Department of Education has engaged in a process called negotiated rule-making to draft regulations. During this time, APA was using a multi-pronged advocacy strategy: submitting comments during the public hearing process; working directly with key negotiators on the committee; leading a bipartisan letter from key House members; engaging SPTAs in outreach to key Senators; and meeting with Department staff to share data and provide important clarifications.On November 6, the negotiated rule-making committee took its final consensus check and approved a package of regulations to implement portions of the higher education provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As a result of all our work over several months, these regulations included health service psychology programs, as well as some applied psychology programs, as part of the definition of ‘professional degree’ for the purposes of the newly established federal student loan limits. This will allow doctoral psychology students in these programs to borrow federal loans at the highest level set in law ($50,000 annually, $200,000 aggregate; exclusive of undergraduate loans), with all current borrowers grandfathered in as part of the legacy student loan programs for the lesser of three academic years or the remaining length of their current program.While there are still further steps in this process before a final rule is published, it is a huge victory to be included in the consensus language, which the Department is legally bound to use when drafting regulations. Importantly, we are the only field added during negotiations that was not originally included in the bill.This was truly a collective effort among staff, our members, and SPTA leaders. We also had a tremendous partner in Andy Vaughan, the President and CEO of Alliant University, who was one of the negotiators on the panel and the leading voice for psychology in the room and at the table. We worked side-by-side with him over the course of many months to get this done and greatly appreciate his partnership.Even as we are tremendously pleased with this result, we recognize that it does not cover all our students and programs, specifically those that do not require licensure. New students in these programs will now be able to borrow under the ‘graduate degree’ limit of $20,500 annually and $100,000 aggregate, exclusive of undergraduate loans. Current students in these programs will also remain grandfathered under current student loan policies for up to three academic years.I want to assure you that our commitment to advocating for increased federal support for the education and training of all psychologists remains unwavering. In addition to student loans, we will continue to fight for increased investments in grant funding for all our students, including through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. As this has been a difficult year for many of us, our profession, and our communities, let us celebrate hard-fought victories like this one when they come.I will continue to keep you apprised as this process moves forward."

Week of Nov 10 Update.pdf