Florida Insurance Council - Covering Florida Since 1962
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel On January 28, 2020, House and Senate committees approved the DFS Consumer Protection bills, HB 1137 and SB 1492. A strike all amendment (678807) was approved for the House bill. The amendment alleviates some of the concerns about the bill raised by property insurers, however, some problems still…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The House moved their bill prohibiting balance billing by air ambulances out of its second committee on January 29, 2020. Under current law, air ambulances are still allowed to balance bill consumers. In contrast, balance billing by out-of-network health care providers for emergency or nonemergency services was abolished in…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 1556 and HB 1179 prohibit specified entities from denying, refusing to allocate, or lowering an individual’s priority for organ transplant medical services solely on the basis of an individual’s intellectual or developmental disability. The insurance part of the bills prohibits insurers, nonprofit health care service plans, and health…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The OIR backed credit for reinsurance bill that incorporates substantive provisions from the 2017 Covered Agreement between the U.S. and the European Union (EU) passed committees in the House and Senate on January 28, 2020. Neither bill was amended and neither had opposition. The bills enact the 2019…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The House Health Market Reform Subcommittee approved a bill making tweaks to the health insurance shared savings program during its meeting on January 28, 2020. The bill was not amended. The shared savings program was created in 2019 as a voluntary program for health insurers and HMOs to provide…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel One provision in the original version of HB 1373 required Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) to study and report on specified issues relating to Medicaid eligibility criteria for nursing facilities, specifically the feasibility of requiring Medicaid eligible persons with a whole or universal life policy…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The Senate moved their life insurance genetic testing prohibition bill to the ACLI compromise during its first committee hearing on January 28, 2020 when the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee adopted a strike all amendment (208866). The Committee voted the bill out with a vote of 5-1. The…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel On January 28, 2020, a vote on Sen. Brandes’ (R) bad faith reform bill was postponed to next week’s committee meeting when the committee ran out of allocated meeting time. The Committee took limited public testimony from two trial lawyers before postponing the bill. The House does not…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The Senate moved their PBM regulation bill out of its first (of three) committee on January 28, 2020 when the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee approved SB 1338 with a technical amendment, but also with a commitment from the bill sponsor to look at adding other, more controversial, amendments…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel HB 1409 creates a public records exemption for certain sensitive business information held by the Department of Financial Services (DFS) which is protected from public records disclosure requirements if held by the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR). Disclosure of the exempted information, which includes Own-Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA)…