2013 Legislative Session
Update
Week Seven
Affordable Care Act | Biomedical Research Funding | Cancer Care & Research | Epinephrine Auto-injectors | Tobacco Education & Use Prevention |
Week seven of the nine-week Florida legislative session concluded
after a frantic week of committee meetings and hundreds of bills moving through
the process. With two remaining weeks,
almost all legislative committees will stop meeting to consider bills
and the focus of the session will change to the House and Senate floor
process. While many large policy issues
remain undecided, one of the largest is how the state will expand
healthcare to Florida’s poorest citizens – either through implementation of the
federal Affordable Care Act or through a state-based solution that does not
rely on the use of federal dollars. The budget conference process also began
Thursday evening with House and Senate conferees meeting through the weekend
and early part of this week to craft a $74-billion state
budget compromise.
Following is a summary of the priority issues for the
American Lung Association in Florida:
Statewide Tobacco Education and Use
Prevention Program
Now in
the budget conference process
The House and Senate
budget allocations and proviso language.
The American Lung Association in
Florida is working to ensure the allocation of these dollars follows CDC’s Best Practices for Comprehensive
Tobacco Control, are competitively procured, and rigorous performance
measures are included in any contracts managed by the Florida Department of
Health.
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Biomedical Research
Funding: SB 1500/ HB 5001
Now in
the budget conference process
HB
5001 and SB
150 contain the language recommending additional funding for the Biomedical Research
Trust Fund over and above the funding provided last legislative session. The
House budget brings Bankhead-Coley and the James and Esther King programs to
$10 million in funding, with Moffitt, Shands, and Sylvester Cancer Center each receiving
$8 million. We will provide further budget conference details in next week’s report
as the health care budget line items are resolved.
House and Senate Appropriations
The
American Lung Association in Florida supports a comprehensive, independent peer
review process to determine the recipients of research dollars.
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Affordable Care Act
Implementation
After lengthy partisan debate, House
plan passed committee last week
The two dominant policy issues for Florida as
it implements the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)
are the role of health exchanges and whether to expand coverage to a portion of
the uninsured. Both the House and the Senate has decided to defer the exchages to the Federal government and not to expand Medicaid. However, the Senate has come up with two very different proposals on how to expand coverage (SB 1816/SB 1844)
On April 11, the House released a proposal
entitled “Florida Health Choices Plus.” The House plan is limited to disabled
adults and parents, allowing them to purchase insurance using an existing
state-based health marketplace. Most of the plans would provide low-cost
preventative and primary care visits, subsidized by state funds.
Highlights of the
Florida Health Choices Plus include:
- Enrollees would
also pay $25 a month in premiums; and
- Adults without
disabilities will be required to work at least 20 hours a week.
Also included in the House plan is the
creation of a task force that will conduct a study allowing health
professionals to practice within the full extent of their training in order to
increase access to medical care. The study will look at the independent
practice issue and whether allowing these professionals to practice with more
independence, within the full extent of their training, will increase Florida’s
supply of medical care. Negotiations of all the proposals will continue
throughout the remainder of the session.
HB 7169 passed the House Appropriations Committee on April 19 with the
Democratic members of the committee voting against the legislation. SB
1816 and SB 1844 will both be
discussed in the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 23.
The
American Lung Association in Florida supports expanding access to health care
services for these vulnerable Floridians.
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Quality
Cancer Care & Research: SB 1660 / HB
7153
House legislation passes final committee and Senate bill considered as
part of budget conference process
SB 1660 by Senator Anitere
Flores (R-Miami) is now officially part of the budget conference process as a
conforming bill being considered as part of the House and Senate Health and
Human Services Appropriations conference. The Senate bill establishes a Cancer
Center of Excellence Award to recognize hospitals, treatment centers, and other
providers in Florida that demonstrate excellence in patient-centered,
coordinated care for persons undergoing cancer treatment and therapy. This bill
provides for the development of performance measures, a rating system, and a
rating standard that must be achieved to be eligible for recognition. The award
and designation may be used in the provider’s advertising and marketing for up
to three years and it entitles the recipient to preferential consideration in
competitive solicitations by a state agency or state university. This bill also
provides for endowments to cancer research institutions in the state to
establish a funded research chair that will attract and retain a promising
researcher in order to serve as a catalyst to attract other national
grant-producing researchers to the state. The endowments are contingent upon
funding in the General Appropriations Act.
On April 16, the similar House
companion measure, HB 7153 by Representative
Jose Oliva (R-Miami), was passed as a committee substitute by the Health and
Human Services Committee.
The American Lung Association in Florida is
monitoring this bill and any potential House committee proposal.
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Epinephrine Auto-injectors SB 284/ HB 366
Awaits action on the House floor
SB 284 by Senator Joe Negron (R-Palm City) and HB 369 by Representative Mike LaRosa
(R-St. Cloud) include a provision that allow schools to store epinephrine
autoinjectors and allow school personnel to administer them to a child in
emergencies. HB 369 passed the House Education Committee on April 9 and is now
ready to be heard on the House floor. SB
284 was passed by the full Senate on April 4.
The
American Lung Association in Florida supports legislation that would allow
schools to maintain a secure supply of epinephrine autoinjectors for use if a
student is having life threatening allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) and if the
participating school district has adopted a protocol by a licensed physician
and school personnel are trained to recognize an anaphylactic reaction and to
administer an epinephrine autoinjection.
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The following bills did not have any
committee action this week:
Florida Clean
Indoor Air Act: SB 258/ HB 439
Cigarette
Surcharge: SB 620/ HB 473
Tobacco Settlement — Nonsettling Manufacturers: SB 252
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We hope this brief legislative update is helpful. We will keep you posted on these and other developments as the 2013 Session progresses.
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