Following last Friday's deadline for introduction of new bills, CAFP is reviewing more than 1,300 pieces of legislation. The Legislative Affairs Committee will examine bills affecting family physicians and their patients and will recommend positions and priorities to the CAFP Board. Two bills are already of high priority to the Academy, as they were carried over from last year:
 
AB 1542 (Assembly Health Committee): This CAFP-sponsored bill would add a functional definition of "patient-centered medical home" to California law.
AB 2093 (V. Manuel Perez): This bill is similar to a bill CAFP co-sponsored last year (AB 1201) that:

• Requires health insurers and plans that provide coverage for childhood and adolescent immunizations to pay a physician or physician group the actual cost of acquiring vaccines plus the cost of administration of the vaccines. This requirement would not apply to services provided in the Medi-Cal or Healthy Families Program due to budget constraints, except with respect to vaccines that are not part of the current contract between a plan and a physician or physician group.
• Prohibits an insurance policy providing coverage for childhood or adolescent immunizations from imposing a deductible, copayment, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing mechanism for the administration of a childhood or adolescent immunization.

Other Bills of Interest

SB 1050 (Yee): This bill would exclude naturopathic doctors from the membership of the Osteopathic Medical Board (OMB), thereby reducing the membership of the board to five osteopathic physicians and surgeons. This problem arose because of budget actions from last year that combined the OMB with the Naturopathic Board.
AB 1825 (De La Torre): Requires health insurance policies to provide coverage for maternity services.
AB 2470 (De La Torre): The goal of this bill is to further protect patients from unfair insurance company practices such as rescinding coverage for spurious reasons when a patient requires care. To do this, the bill requires the state to establish standard information and health history questions to be used by health care service plans and insurers for their individual health care coverage application forms. This bill would also require all plans and insurers to complete medical underwriting prior to issuing a health care service plan contract or insurance policy.
SB 1069 (Pavley): This bill would allow a Physician Assistant to:

• Sign and attest to any document evidencing any physical examination or similar task that might ordinarily be signed by his or her supervising physician.
• Order durable medical equipment, certify disability, and make arrangements with regard to home health services or personal care services.