Florida Insurance Council - Covering Florida Since 1962
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 1640, the Senate professional license deregulation package, cleared its last committee of reference on April 18, 2019 with one amendment to add back a member to the Florida Building Commission (Commission). The House bill has cleared all its committee and is waiting for a floor vote. The bills…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The Senate shared savings program bill, SB 524, was amended in its last committee on April 18, 2019 to add formulary management for the state group health insurance program. Some health insurers and HMOs may find the provision requiring formulary management concerning as it could set a precedent for…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The Department of Financial Services (DFS) agency package passed its last House and Senate committees this week. The Senate bill (SB 1704) was not amended in committee. But, the House bill (HB 1393) picked up five amendments, some to match it to the Senate bill, but others to…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The condo subrogation prohibition contained in HB 1075, a large condominium association bill, was significantly changed when as strike all amendment (150791) was approved by its last House committee on April 18, 2019. As originally filed, the provision prohibited a condo owner’s insurance policy from having rights of subrogation…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel In an interesting turn of events, the Senate amended their telehealth bill (SB 1526) on April 18, 2019 to add back in payment parity, a provision they removed just two days prior. Other, more minor changes, were made in the amendment adopted on April 18, 2019. Sen. Harrell (R),…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel Language in the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle agency package (HB 1053) that was of concern to some auto insurers was amended out of the bill during committee on April 18, 2019. The language that was removed related to the Department providing bulk crash data and eliminated…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel On April 17, 2019, the House approved HB 617, a glitch bill making a clarifying change to last year’s bill requiring flood disclosure on homeowner’s policies. The floor vote on the bill was 113-0. Before voting on the bill, the House read it a second time, waived the rules…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel Saying the proposed strike all amendment (338298) represented an agreement between House and Senate on AOB reform, Sen. Broxson (R) amended the Senate AOB bill in committee on April 17, 2019 to match the AOB bill already passed by the House. Thus, it appears AOB reform is in a…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel A tort reform bill dealing with the dangerous instrumentality doctrine moved out of its last Senate committee on April 17, 2019 with a strike all amendment (661740) increasing the required insurance. The House bill, HB 355, was set for a floor hearing on April 17, 2019, but was postponed.…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel SB 1520 expands direct primary care. The bill changes all statutory references of “direct primary care” to “direct health care” which authorizes direct care to be for medical services, including dental services, that are not only primary care. It maintains current law that direct health care agreements are not…