Sept. 25, 2017 – At the Sept. 21 Medical Advertising Hall of Fame Young Executives’ Night Out, Coalition for Healthcare Communication Executive Director John Kamp addressed a crowd of nearly 100 junior executives, summarizing Washington threats to medical/life sciences marketing and spelling out a dire need for grassroots action related to tax reform.

On the heels of a rallying cry earlier last week to the Coalition to reach out to members of Congress to help them understand the economic costs of limiting or cutting the medical marketing tax deduction, Kamp strongly urged these young executives to contact Congress now about the need to retain the tax deductibility of medical communication and advertising costs.

He reviewed with the enthusiastic crowd a recent letter by Dale Taylor of Abelson Taylor, Chicago’s largest medical marketing agency, which urged House Ways and Means Member Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) to reject any tax bill that would reduce the deductibility of marketing. In his letter to Roskam, Taylor states “I am sure you are familiar with work of Nobel Laureate Laurence Klein, which showed that advertising in America is a necessary part of our economy and generates, directly and indirectly, over 20 million jobs and $5.8 trillion or almost 16% of total economic output.”

At a Sept. 20 Coalition member call to address this important issue, Dick O’Brien, head of the 4A’s Washington office, indicated that although the Coalition and its allies have worked to defeat calls to end the marketing tax deduction in the past, the current, intense focus on tax reform is placing the deduction at greater risk than it has ever been before. O’Brien and Kamp are urging medical marketers to take action by contacting their members of Congress as well as members of the Senate Finance Committee (https://www.finance.senate.gov/about/membership) and the House Committee on Ways and Means (https://waysandmeans.house.gov/subcommittee/full-committee/).