Legislative Update Week of April 22nd

This week saw the start of an issue that MSMS has been concerned with for the past decade. The second attempt in the past four years to reform Michigan's Auto No Fault system officially started; while at the same time taking attention away from both chambers passing their respective budget bills furthering that process down the road. Let’s review the activities of the past week:

House

This week the full House took action on their budget bills sending their usual two budget bills to the Senate for their consideration. The general government budget omnibus legislation saw the least amount of controversy with the education omnibus bill, affectionately known as the "School Bus" has a harder time moving due to some language that dealt with employee contracts. Both bills are now in the Senate passing another hurdle in the budget process.

More importantly the House finally sent Senate Bills 178 and 179 to the Governor for his consideration. These pieces of legislation would help create the uniformed prior authorization forms for physicians when looking to obtain authorization for prescriptions. This will finally bring some solid reforms providing physicians more time with patients and less time doing paperwork.

The House Health Policy committee this week had a presentation on CRE infections. This topic came about from an article that was in the WashingtonPost concerning the increase in the dangerous infections around the country and that only a few states were tracking them. Matthew Sims, MD, who is the Director of the Department of Infectious Disease Research at Beaumont hospital, testified for the medical society on the effects of the infections in Michigan what health systems and physicians are doing about it. There could be future legislation that could require physicians report the instances of CRE infections.

Picture inside committee room for
the No-Fault hearing.

The House Insurance committee takes the award this week with the most active and anticipated committee. House bill 4612 was introduced this week that would provide a major overhaul of the automotive no-fault insurance system that Michigan currently has. As we mentioned last week in the Update, this would provide a cap of coverage for those in a catastrophic accident to $1 Million, provide a pilot program for those looking for low cost insurance and have a low value vehicle, and a major attempt to strike back against fraud. Tempers flared and words were heated between those testifying and member of the committee which boiled over to member to member heated exchanges.

The committee was held in the largest room available to the House for committees and still had four more rooms and hallways full of people wanting to testify and get their voice heard on the issue. The committee went late into the afternoon with the promise that those who wanted to testify could. Finally at the end of the day the committee was not able to get through everyone leaving with more committee meetings to happen here in the near future. MSMS is working with the Coalition Protecting Auto No-Fault (CPAN) in providing information for the committee members on why this is the wrong move for Michigan. We will continue working with our partners to stop this harmful legislation.

Senate:

The senate had more of a mundane week by having them primarily working on their budgets, sending each individual budget to the House for their consideration; a different move from the House that bundled their budgets together. Multiple amendments were made on the floor including the amendment to place the Medicaid expansion money in the Department of Community Health budget, but failed along party lines. With the expansion money still left out it leaves supporters working and pushing for the money to be included. At this point we wait to see the work of the crucial conference committees that will ultimately make the decision on the expansion money.

This week is the MSMS House of Delegates in Grand Rapids. We will be providing an overview of the issues that happened at the annual meeting. Follow MSMS at http://www.msms.org/advocacy to get the up to date information from our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Stay with us as well to get the most up to date information on the issue affecting physicians around Michigan.