Michelle Cook and House Dems Gear Up Down the Stretch
With some important initiatives already sent up to the Senate, and some other battles still looming, the 8th District's own Deputy Speaker and Representative Michelle Cook (Torrington) provided us a list of important bills and her priorities still awaiting action before sine die, when the session is gaveled out at midnight of June 5.
Protecting First Responders
On Wednesday night, the House voted to expand the Firefighters Cancer Relief Program to reimburse eligible firefighters for insurance deductibles and laboratory and diagnostic testing fees. Rep. Cook championed the bill to help ensure firefighters have the resources necessary to take care of their health. The program's funding is available to firefighters with several types of cancer, including brain, skin, skeletal, digestive and respiratory, that have resulted in death, temporary or permanent disability. The measure is only the most recent example of Cook leading the fight to support our first responders, having worked in 2016 to establish a relief fund to replace lost wages of firefighters diagnosed with certain types of cancer resulting from their service as paid municipal or volunteer firefighters.
Neither chamber is done delivering much needed reforms for the first responder community in this session. On Monday, legislative leaders unveiled a bipartisan proposal to provide police and firefighters suffering with post traumatic stress disorder up to one year of workers' compensation coverage. The package is already being touted as a potential model to be followed around the country.
Relief for Prescription Drug Pricing
Efforts to provide CT consumers with relief on their prescription drug bills are still alive with just a couple of weeks left. An Act Concerning Prescription Drugs , a bill that would require the Comptroller to establish a CT Prescription Drug Program to make outpatient prescription drugs available to program participants at the lowest possible cost is awaiting action in the House. The bill would also require drug manufacturers to notice the CT Insurance Commissioner about "pay-for-delay" agreements and force carriers to reduce the cost of brand name drugs that are in those agreements, as well as allow certain self-insured private employers to access the benefit, prohibit pharmacy benefit managers and pharmacies from recouping any portion of a settled claim with some exceptions, and established a drug reimportation task force.
Other consumer protection efforts are still under consideration. Substitute HB6096 looks to limit insurers' ability to change the drugs and costs of those drugs in their prescription drug formularies during a policy term. The measure would protect consumers from arbitrary fluctuations in their prescription drug plans, while allowing carriers to move brand-name drugs to higher cost-sharing tier so long as a generic replacement is provided as an alternative.
Expanding Coverage for Preexisting Conditions
A fight to expand the definition of preexisting conditions has moved through the House and into the Senate. HB5521 seeks to prohibit short-term nonrenewable health insurance policies from containing a preexisting condition provision. The law already prohibits other individual and group health insurance policies and HMO contracts from imposing a preexisting condition provision. A preexisting condition provision limits or excludes coverage for preexisting conditions.The bill redefines the term “preexisting condition provision” to include preexisting conditions whether or not medical advice,diagnosis, care, or treatment was recommended or received before the coverage effective date. Current law limits the provision to preexisting conditions for which medical advice, diagnosis, care, or treatment was recommended or received.
Increasing Funding for Elderly Nutrition
Efforts to provide sufficient state reimbursement to cover the costs of providing meals to the elderly are also still alive, though will move through a different vehicle than proposed bill 5621.
Accommodating Breastfeeding in the Workplace
The House has passed a bill to specify parameters for employers to provide an area for employees expressing breast milk. Today employers are required to make reasonable efforts to provide a room other than a toilet stall where an employee can express breast milk in private during a meal or break. This bill makes it specific that this area be free from intrusion, shielded from the public, include or be near a refrigerator the employee can use if they haven't provided their own, and have access to an electrical outlet, without incurring undue hardship on the employer to meet these requirements. The measure awaits action in the Senate.
Minimum Staffing Levels at Nursing Home Facilities
The Senate is yet to take up a measure aimed at ensuring CT's chronic or convalescent nursing homes maintain daily minimum per-resident per-day staffing ratios. The bill instructs DPH to develop regulations to establish the new requirements, which specify the aggregated time licensed nurses and nurse's aides are providing direct care to a patient each day. It allows DPH to conduct audits to ensure compliance, and allows DSS to reimburse homes that have to spend more on staffing to comply.
The 2019 legislative session closes at midnight on June 5.