Washington DC

Back at the beginning of November I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC for a week as part of the delegation from the Utah Dental Association to attend the American Dental Association caucus and committee meetings. Each year the location changes, and over the next several years I'll get to travel to Denver, Atlanta and Hawaii.

It's always fun to go back to DC. It brings back great memories of our time out there for dental school. While we were there we took a tour of the White House. It was pretty cool and educational.

We had some awesome views out over the White House lawn towards the memorials.

We also took a tour of the Capitol Building. I've done the tour before, but it's still a good tour.

As a group we went around and visited with the Utah congressmen and senators. We were talking with them about some resolutions and bills that are before the respective floors that we would like to see passed. The bills deal mostly without unfair practices that dental insurance companies practice that cheat patients out of their dental benefits. Basically we are just asking that the dental insurance companies play by the same rules that every other business in America is required to. Here is a picture we took with Senator Orin Hatch after our meeting with him.

One evening the ADA had a reception at the Museum of Natural History. They based it off the movie Night At The Museum. Lisa and I visited this museum several times while we lived out there. It's one of my favorites in DC. I took this selfie in front of the Easter Island statue and sent it to the kids. I titled it, "You, Dumb Dumb! Give me gum gum!" They got a good kick out of that.

Most of the time we were there was spent in long, boring meetings unfortunately. Here's a picture of some of the Utah delegates at our table during one of the very boring procedural meetings for the ADA.

In all it was an eye opening trip for me to see how the ADA functions. It makes me appreciate all the time that people put in behind the scenes.