Senate Committee on Health – 7/3/13

After about a two hour delay, the Senate Committee on Health convened and passed a handful of bills that Health Access is supporting. The delay was in part due to a few controversial bills that were being debated on the Senate Floor. The following bills passed out of committee:
AB 617 (Nazarian), which would establish a coordinated notice and appeal system for eligibility and application issues for the Exchange, Medi-Cal and AIM, passed out of committee with a vote of 8-0.

AB 411 (Pan), which takes an important step towards identifying and reducing health disparities by requiring Medi-Cal managed care plans to analyze quality data by gender, race, ethnicity, primary language and, to the extent the data is available, by sexual orientation and gender identity, passed out of committee with a vote of 8-1.
AB678 (Gordon) which would require local health care districts to conduct an assessment of the community’s health care needs passed of committee with a vote of 9-0.
AB 1180 (Pan) which would make changes to California law relating to HIPAA which are necessary as a result of the Affordable Care Act, was on the consent file and passed out of committee.
AB1263 (Pérez), which would establish the Medi-Cal Patient-Centered Communication program (CommuniCal), to provide and reimburse for medical interpretation services to Medi-Cal beneficiaries who are limited English proficient (LEP), passed out of committee with a vote of 7-2.

Health Access California promotes quality, affordable health care for all Californians.