Florida Insurance Council - Covering Florida Since 1962
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 1828, a bill designed to put requirements on litigation financing to protect consumers, but not to outright ban litigation financing, was effectively killed by the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on February 19, 2020 when the Committee ran out of meeting time before voting on the bill. The…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The Senate peer to peer car sharing bill (SB 478) stalled this week when the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee postponed the bill for the second week in a row. The Committee is not set to meet again which makes passage of the bill very difficult this year. The…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel A bill providing more flexibility on who pays taxes on trust investments moved closer to passage this week. The bill allows an independent trustee of any grantor trust to reimburse the grantor for all or part of the income taxes paid by the grantor as a result of the…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel Only genetic information that is a medical diagnosis would be allowed to be used by life insurers under the Senate genetic testing bill (SB 1564) that sailed through its last Senate committee on February 20, 2020. The bill passed with a vote of 16-1. The bill will now be…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 744 expands the current law on direct primary care agreements by allowing podiatrists to enter into these agreements with individuals. Current law only allows allopathic physicians, osteopathic physicians, chiropractic physicians, nurses, or dentists to use direct primary care agreements. The bill also changes other regulations for podiatrists,…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The House moved their PBM regulation bill (HB 7045) to the floor on February 18, 2020 when it passed its last committee, House Health and Human Services. A strike all amendment and two amendments to the strike all were adopted to the bill. The strike all amendment:…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 1188 and HB 1409 create a public records exemption for certain sensitive business information held by the Department of Financial Services (DFS) which current law already protects from public records disclosure requirements if held by the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR). Disclosure of the exempted information, which includes…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel On February 18, 2020, the Senate Health Policy Committee adopted an amendment to their pharmacist test and treat bill (SB 714) to limit it to flu only. The House bill (HB 389) is different and allows pharmacists to test and treat for flu and strep. The House bill was…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The House organ transplant bill, HB 1187, no longer contains a prohibition on health insurance excluding coverage for organ donors as the provision was removed in its first committee. However, the Senate organ donor bill (SB 1516) still contains the prohibition. The bill differences will have to be worked…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel HB 1279 tweaks the health insurance shared savings program. It passed its last committee on February 18, 2020 without amendment. It will now be heard on the House floor when scheduled by the Rules Committee. The shared savings program was created in 2019 as a voluntary program for…