Patient-Protection Bills Moving Forward in Legislature

With the legislative session in full-swing, Health Access California’s bills are moving full steam ahead!

Last week, SB 908 and SB 1135 both passed the Senate Health Committee. SB 1135 (Monning) helps consumers know there are time limits on how long they have to wait to get health care appointments and who to complain to if they have problems with their health plan. Among other provisions, the legislation would put the state regulator’s complaint number on the insurance card. SB 908 (Hernandez) gives consumers and purchasers the information they need to decide if they want to stay with a health plan that has an unreasonable rate increase. Both of these measures now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

This week, the Senate Health Committee passed SB 997 (Lara), which allows low-income, undocumented children currently covered by Kaiser Permanente to remain with Kaiser, if they chose to, while enrolling in full-scope Medi-Cal coverage. It is now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee as well.

Two measures addressing transparency in prescription drug prices are also gaining traction. SB 1010 (Hernandez) would require insurers and health plans to provide detailed, publicly available information on prescription drug costs for large employers and state purchasers, such as CalPERS, the Medi-Cal program, Corrections, and the Department of General Services. It passed the Senate Health Committee this week and now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Another bill addressing drug prices, AB 2436 (Hernandez), will be heard in the Assembly Health Committee next week. This bill gives consumers more information about the cost of their prescription drugs, how much they will have to pay, what their health plan pays for the drug, and also the cost of the same drug in Canada, Germany and Mexico.

For more information about all of Health Access’ sponsored legislation, click here. To track all health care bills that impact California consumers, check out our Bill Tracking Matrix. An updated version is posted every Monday morning.

Want to take action to ensure these bills become law? Click here to learn how!