Legislative Update: Week of May 28th

This week saw a flurry of budget activity this week with conference committees meeting throughout the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday period. The House also took the time to push a cut in the Michigan income tax that was scheduled to come at the beginning of next year ahead of schedule. The House spent most of Thursday night in session, passing all but the education budget, scheduling an unusual Friday session day for the House. Lets review the rest of the week in Lansing:

Senate:

The Senate Insurance committee continued taking testimony on Senate bills 1115-1118, the Patients First Reform package that amends Michigan's tort reform to protect access to Michigan's patients. MSMS testified last week in the committee, coverage on that can be found in last week article. The committee is expected to take a vote on the legislation this coming Tuesday. The Senate Health Policy committee scheduled a hearing for Thursday to take up Senate bill 481 which would expand the scope of practice and provide independence for advance practice nurses. Due to the budget, the committee was cancelled and scheduled for this coming Wednesday at 9:00am.

House:

The House worked long through the week, even into Friday working on the budget. While waiting for the conference committees to come to a conclusion they had the ability to work on some of the other lingering issues. The House did pass House bill 5338 which would amend the public health code to allow the Director of the Department of Community Health to issue orders to place designer substances on the controlled substances list i.e. K2. As mentioned before the House did pass their version of tax relief by upping the time when the rollback of the income tax would take effect.

Budget:

Budget was the main story this week. The Senate passed through all of its individual budget conference reports and the government omnibus that included everything but education funding. The House did the same with the government omnibus but had to wait until Friday's session to pass the education omnibus or "school bus" as it was affectionately called.

The Department of Community Health budget saw some good come out of the conference report. First the legislature rejected the $17 million cut to GME suggested by the governor; rather the legislature funded it with an extra $8.6 million more than what the governor had proposed and a victory from looking at such a substantial cut. Primary care physicians are going to see a rise in their reimbursement rates from Medicaid as $281 Million of federal funding was put into Medicaid to raise the rates for primary care (excluding ER physicians and some OB services) to Medicare rates. This change was a part of the Affordable Care Act. Investments in Health Kids Dental, Medicaid coverage for Autism, and Health Michigan Fund were all positive and more than had expected. The budget now goes to the Governor for his signature.

For the latest legislative news and activity check out http://www.msms.org/advocacy. Help support those who support you, go to http://www.mdpac.org to find out how you can help!