CAFP-Supported Bills Signed Into Law

AB 210 (Hernández, Roger) Maternity services

Summary: This new law ensures maternity benefits will be covered in all group health plans.
Position:  Support

AB 415 (Logue) Healing arts: telehealth

Summary: This new law authored by the Vice Chair of the Assembly Health Committee, Dan Logue (R - Chico), aims to update and clarify current telehealth law. It requires verbal consent to be obtained from the patient and documented in the patient's record prior to the use of telehealth. It also would apply all laws regarding the confidentiality of health care information and a patient's rights to his or her medical information to all telehealth interactions. In addition, the bill would require every health plan and insurer, including those contracting with the Medi-Cal Managed Care Program, to adopt payment policies to compensate health care providers who provide covered health care services through telehealth (subject to the terms and conditions of the contract between the enrollee or subscriber and the health plan). Finally, the bill clarifies a provision that prohibits health plans and health insurers from requiring in-person contact between provider and patient before payment is made for telehealth services.

Position: Support

AB 581 (John A. Pérez) Public health: food access

Summary: This new law creates the California Healthy Food Financing Initiative (CHFFI), the CHFFI fund and the CHFFI Council, for the purpose of expanding access to healthy foods in underserved communities.
Position: Support

AB 1296 (Bonilla) Health Care Eligibility, Enrollment, and Retention Act

Summary: This new law would enact the Health Care Eligibility, Enrollment, and Retention Act, which would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to establish a standardized single application form and related renewal procedures for Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, the Exchange, and county programs. 
Position: Support

ABX1 21 (Blumenfield) and ABX1 30 (Blumenfield)

Summary: These new laws extend the sunset on a tax on managed care health plans in order to make up for a shortfall in Healthy Families funding.
Position: Support

AJR 10 (Brownley) School-based health centers

Summary: This resolution memorializes the Legislature's support for the school-based health center program authorized by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an appropriation by the United States Congress to fund this program, policies that include school-based health centers as a partner in creating a medical home for all children, and the inclusion of school-based health centers in the reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Position: Support

AJR 13 (Lara) Graduate medical education

Summary: This resolution urges the President and the Congress of the United States to continue to provide resources to increase the supply of physicians in California and to consider solutions that would increase the number of graduate medical education residency positions.
Position: Support

SB 41 (Yee) Hypodermic needles and syringes.

Summary: This new law increases access to, and counseling for, the use and safe disposal of hypodermic needles and syringes.

Position: Support

SB 51 (Alquist) Health care coverage

Summary: This new law gives enforcement authority to the state to fully implement the medical loss ratio provisions (premiums dollars spent on patient care versus profits/administration) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and related regulations.
Position: Support

SB 222 (Evans) Maternity services

Summary: This new law ensures maternity benefits will be covered in all individual health plans.

Position: Support

SB 299 (Evans) Employment: pregnancy or childbirth leave

Summary: This new law prohibits an employer from eliminating or refusing to pay for health care coverage while an employee takes pregnancy or childbirth leave under a group health plan.
Position: Support

SB 543 (Steinberg) Business and professions: regulatory boards

Summary: This new law will restrict the Physical Therapy (PT) Board from disciplining physical therapists based solely on their employment in a medical, podiatric, or chiropractic corporation for one year, and allows time to develop a more comprehensive solution to this ambiguity in existing law while protect the jobs of thousands of physical therapists who currently work in medical corporations. Recently, the California Office of Legislative Counsel released a legal opinion arguing that physical therapists cannot be employed by any professional corporation except those owned by PTs or naturopathic doctors. This ruling would have essentially changed the professional relationship physicians have held with PTs for years and punish those who do not end that relationship.

Position: Support

SB 614 (Kehoe) Childhood immunization

Summary: This new law allows a pupil in grades 7 through 12 to conditionally attend school for up to 30 calendar days beyond the pupils first day of attendance for the 2011-12 school year if that pupil has not been fully immunized with all pertussis boosters appropriate for the pupil's age. Dozens of school districts reported that pupil compliance with the original July 1, 2011 pertussis immunization deadline was alarmingly low. This law is an effort to balance public health concerns with cost concerns while still maintaining a deadline for immunization.

Position: Support

SB 746 (Lieu) Tanning facilities

Summary: This new law will make California the first state to prohibit persons less than 18 years of age from using ultraviolet tanning devices in tanning salons. This law will help to combat the rise in Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Position: Support

SB 866 (Hernandez) Health care coverage: prescription drugs

Summary: This new law directs the Departments of Insurance and Managed Health Care and stakeholders to jointly develop a standardized prior authorization form for prescription drugs by July 2012. The form cannot exceed two pages and must be electronically available and transmittable. Health plans and insurers must use the standardized form for all prior authorization requests by January 2013. If a plan or insurer does not use the form, or fails to respond within two business days, the prior authorization is deemed approved.
Position: Support

SB 946 (Steinberg) Health care coverage: mental illness: pervasive developmental disorder or autism: public health

Summary: This new law requires health insurance plans to provide coverage for behavioral health treatment for individuals with autism.

Position: Support

Vetoed Bills
AB 1116 (Fong) Emergency services: populations with limited English proficiency

Summary: This bill would have required the Secretary of California Emergency Management to consider the multiple languages and needs of populations who have limited proficiency in the English language during emergency preparedness planning, response, and recovery.
Position: Support

SB 747 (Kehoe) Continuing education: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients

Summary:  This bill would have required health care providers to take continuing medical education (CME) on cultural competency, sensitivity, and best practices for providing adequate care to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. While CAFP appreciated the intent of the bill (to help address health concerns specific to the LGBT population), we oppose attempts to require CME through legislative mandate.

Position: Oppose unless Amended

SB 791 (Simitian) Health care: mammograms

Summary: This bill had the laudable goal of giving women more control over their health by providing information to those found to have highly dense breasts.  The bill required that mammography-results letters inform these women that mammography may not be able to pick up small abnormalities in highly dense breasts and that additional screening might be necessary. Mammography is not a perfect screening tool for women at ANY level of breast density; nor is an ultrasound or MRI. Screening tests, by their nature, are a balance of cost, risk and benefit. As patient advocates, family physicians believe in a patient’s right to know about her breast type, but the data was not clear that additional benefits would be gained by this bill. It is clear that this bill would unnecessarily increase costs, patients’ health concerns and the time spent by primary care physicians with their patients explaining the meaning of this notice.

Position: Express Concern