Bucks Montgomery Physician Fall 2020 - 20

QUARTERLY LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

Legislative
Updates
October 2020

Stay up to date on PAMED's legislative priorities at www.pamedsoc.org/Advocacy.
3rd Quarter PAMED Legislative Look: The Pennsylvania
General Assembly is now in the final days of the
2019-Regular session covering 2019-2020. While the
current environment has changed the dynamics in
Harrisburg and how legislative activity is occurring,
we have pushed forward with key advocacy issues
and continued to conduct stakeholder meetings and
legislative visits on the most important advocacy
issues to physician members. These include prior
authorization reform, scope of practice, out-ofnetwork balance billing, IMGs, physician immunity
during COVID-19 and various other ancillary issues.
Both chambers of the Pennsylvania General Assembly
have approximately ten session days left each, however,
many pundits around Harrisburg are anticipating a 'sine
die' session which would include additional days to move
legislation. Of primary focus for the legislative members
will be passing a budget for the Commonwealth as the
pandemic forced the passage of a temporary 5-month
budget as legislators were not able to conduct normal
budget proceedings as a result of the pandemic.
Even though there a few session days remaining, it is
apparent that most everyone's focus has shifted to Tuesday,
November 3rd, election day. PAMPAC, the political action
committee of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, will be
actively engaged in a number of races around the state and
closer to election time will have a full list of candidates
we are supporting and more information on how you
can engage if desired. While the big focus will be on the
presidential election and other statewide races, there are a
number of key races in both the Pennsylvania House and
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fall 2020

Senate. This is a unique year for the Pennsylvania General
Assembly as we will see both the top-ranking members of
each chamber step aside (Mike Turzai and Joe Scarnati).
Turning our attention to legislation, we remain focused
on getting movement on PAMED's top priority issues.
PAMED continues to push for advancement of prior
authorization reform legislation (HB1194 and SB920)
and recently conducted a stakeholders' meeting with the
prime sponsor of SB920 (Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill)
and the chairman of the Senate Banking and Insurance
Committee (Senator Scavello). We continue to be actively
engaged on out of network-balance billing legislation
(HB1862 Rep. Pickett) and oppose it in its current form.
This is an important issue at both the state and federal
level and while the issue needs to be addressed, the
current bill falls short of removing the patient from
the middle and is extremely pro-insurer. However,
amendments have been drafted to address these issues
and if they were to be included in the bill, PAMED
would change our position to support the legislation.
HB1947 (Rep. Kaufer), which seeks to modernize the
process by which graduates of international medical
schools become licensed, advanced to the Senate after
final passage by the House and is expected to pass that
chamber and reach the Governor's desk before the end
of the session. HB2103 (Rep. Jozwiak) is a proposed
fix to Act 112 re: patient test results and we have been
working diligently with the House Health Committee
to come up with appropriate language and advance
this legislation. This bill is now up for a committee
vote in the coming days. PAMED has been successful

http://www.pamedsoc.org/Advocacy

Bucks Montgomery Physician Fall 2020

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