Florida Insurance Council - Covering Florida Since 1962
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel Bills relating to direct primary care (HB 161) and drug transparency (HB 589) were taken up for the first time on the House floor on March 29, 2017. The House is expected to debate and pass the bills on March 30, 2017. Regarding direct primary care, both the…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel For the fourth week in a row, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on his own bill during his committee meeting because he doesn’t have the votes to pass it. The postponed bill, SB 262, is a bill heavily supported by doctors and the trial…
By: Sam Miller, FIC Consultant HB 1397 Medical Use of Marijuana — by Rodrigues (R)Staff analysis is available from this link: PDF A House subcommittee March 28 was the first legislative group this session to formally move to implement the medical marijuana constitutional amendment approved by Florida voters in November. The House Health Quality Subcommittee…
By: Sam Miller, FIC Consultant SB 530 Health Insurance – by SteubeThe Senate bill is now this strike-all: 187710 and this amendment to the amendment: 171194 HB 877 Health Insurer Authorization — by Harrison The House bill is now this strike-all: 657639 The two committees will be producing revised staff analyses and revised texts of…
By: Sam Miller, FIC Consultant SB 800 Medication Synchronization — by BroxsonAmendment 445314, Broxson [PDF] HB 1191 Medication Synchronization — by CruzAmendment 689821 Cruz [PDF] A bill (CS/SB 800, CS/HB 1191) promoting partial refills and synchronization of prescription drugs advanced March 27 through the Senate Banking & Insurance Committee and House Health Innovation Subcommittee.…
By: Sam Miller, FIC Consultant HB 579 Payment of Health Care Claims — by HagerAmendment by Hager [PDF] An important House panel, the Health Innovation Subcommittee, on March 27 voted to ban retroactive denial of health insurance claims once authorization is given to doctors, despite warnings from the Florida Insurance Council that responsible policyholders…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel The bill dealing with collection of assessments for long term care insurance due to the Penn Treaty insolvency passed its first committee on March 27, 2017. The House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee passed the proposed committee substitute (PCS) for HB 1273 that was released on Thursday, March 23,…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel A bill, HB 617, requiring pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) to obtain a certificate of authority (COA) from the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) to operate as a third party administrator and to require quarterly audits of each PBM regarding updates to maximum allowable cost (MAC) pricing information passed its…
By: Katrina Callaway, FIC General Counsel On March 23, 2017, the House passed the bill to overhaul the state group health insurance program primarily along party lines, with the Democrats voting against the bill. Overhaul of the state group health insurance program in this manner has been a priority of Speaker Corcoran’s for the past…
By: Sam Miller, FIC Consultant (HB 1397, SB 406, SB 614, SB 1388, SB 1666, SB 1758) It is bound to come up at some point, but a 90-minute workshop by the Senate Health Policy Committee March 22 on implementation of Amendment #2 on medical marijuana focused on the number of producers, access by minors…