California Bill Research Articles

California Bill Would Tighten Oversight on Private Equity Hospital Purchases

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. According to Medscape California lawmakers are considering a bill that would tighten oversight of private equity and hedge fund buyers of hospitals and healthcare facilities (1). Private equity investment in hospitals and physician groups has been under scrutiny in recent months after a slew of high-profile failures, including bankruptcies and hospital closures. California lawmakers have drafted a bill that would require private equity firms and hedge funds to give the state attorney general written notice before purchasing a healthcare facility or provider group. The attorney general would have to approve the transaction. Buyers would also be required to submit written notice to any federal or state agency as required by law within 90 days of the transaction, and the attorney general could extend that period. The bill gives the attorney general the power to halt an acquisition if there is a "substantial likelihood of anticompetitive effects" or if it would …

California bill would allow funding of drug‐free sites in Housing First

A bill introduced this month in the California State Assembly would end harm reduction's exclusivity as the approach to addressing persons with substance use issues who live in housing developed under state's Housing First guidelines. If approved, the legislation would allow up to 25% of state housing funds to be allocated to drug‐free housing under an abstinence model.

Who to Believe? Consequences for Physicians and Nurses Who Spread Misinformation

Who to Believe? Consequences for Physicians and Nurses Who Spread Misinformation

Groups as Lawmakers: Group Bills in a US State Legislature

AbstractScholars posit that groups play an important role in the legislative process and legislator decision making, but find these questions difficult to empirically study due to the private information exchanges. This article exploits a legislative reporting institution to explore group involvement in policy making. In the California state legislature, extra-legislative individuals or organizations that write legislation and secure a legislator to author the bill may be listed as sponsors. Data come from California bill analyses and extend from 1993 to 2014. This group tactic is frequently used: 40% of bills introduced and over 60% of bills that become law list an extra-legislative sponsor. Group sponsorship is significantly related to passage, even after matching on a number of covariates. Legislators use fewer group bills and substitute out of group bills as they gain experience. Group input serves as an integral part of a legislative portfolio and the agenda-setting stage of legislative decision making.

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

• Bipartisan Massachusetts bill would strengthen campus sexual assault policies• California bill would require peace officers to be at least 25 years old

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

California bill to protect victims of sexual assault advances Tennessee bill on anti‐Semitism stalls

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

California bill would try all under 21 as juveniles Hawaii bill raises smoking age to 25, eventually to 100

Letter to Gavin Newsom in Reply to the NCAA: Constitutionality of California SB 206, the 'Fair Pay to Play Act'

In a recent open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, the National Collegiate Athletic Association alleged that pending California bill SB 206, known as the Fair Pay to Play Act, would be unconstitutional. The bill has passed both California houses and awaits the Governor's signature. This letter responds to what appears to be the NCAA legal theory, which is that state-by-state interference in college player compensation would violate the so-called commerce of the U.S. Constitution. It does not do that, I argue, notwithstanding a precedent that likely will be the NCAA's primary legal authority, a Ninth Circuit decision of 1993 called NCAA v. Miller. Unlike the statute in the Miller case, SB 206 does not directly regulate or discriminate against out-of-state commerce in any way, and so it could violate the dormant commerce clause only if it incidentally burdens interstate commerce in a way not justified by the state's legitimate interests. It does not do that, however, as evinced above all by the NCAA's own tolerance of all kinds of regulatory variation imposed by conferences and sub-national organizations. In the end, the NCAA's fear clearly is not state-by-state variation that would balkanize college sports oversight. Rather than fearing that the states will all adopt different rules, it fears that they will adopt the same one--under which players can enjoy compensation. But that then becomes a criticism of the wisdom of SB 206 as economic policy, and the Supreme Court has made very clear the that sort of criticism is irrelevant to commerce clause analysis.

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

California bill aims to help housing insecurity for students Tennessee gun permitting bill advances

California bill would grant full practice authority to nurse practitioners

A California bill that would give full practice authority to nurse practitioners (NPs), including psychiatric specialists, to work to the full extent of their training and education has been introduced to address a shortage of health care providers, especially in rural and underserved areas. To date, nearly half of states and U.S. territories have adopted full practice authority licensure laws for NPs.

California bill requires maternal screening, case management

California bill requires maternal screening, case management

Interest convergence and hegemony in dual language: Bilingual education, but for whom and why?

I analyze two bills from the state legislatures of California (SB 1174) and Arizona (SB 1242) that propose to expand bilingual education where English-only education was previously the default. Using a critical discourse analysis lens to conduct a directed content analysis, I ask who bilingual education is for, why it is offered, and how the proposed programs would affect the education of English learners. The theoretical framework draws heavily from interest convergence theory, which holds that minoritized communities make civil rights gains when their interests converge with interests of the majority/state. Additionally, the framework employs the idea of economic preparation through education as a hegemonic force, driving the expansion of dual language programs. The bills demonstrate the shifting discourse from supporting English learners to an economic interest in bilingualism. The Arizona bill restricts bilingual education to students who already speak English fluently, making the programs unavailable to English learners. The California bill explicitly makes the potential programs available to all students, including English learners. The bills mention multiple reasons for expanding bilingual education, but the primary emphases are economic benefits and national security. While the promotion of bilingualism is a step forward, interest convergence theory and hegemony are useful analytical tools to understand the change and ensure that all students have equitable access to language programs.

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

California bill would boost authority of campus security officers Illinois bill allows alcohol sales on campus

California bill poised to lift restrictions on egg donation

California bill poised to lift restrictions on egg donation

California bill would accord pharmacists provider status

A bill to recognize California pharmacists as “health care providers who have the authority to provide health care services” was introduced on February 21 in the state senate and amended on April 1. “There’s the potential it could be signed by the governor in September,” said Dawn Benton, executive vice president of the California Society of Health-System Pharmacists (CSHP), a cosponsor of the bill. “It could move fast,” she said, “or it could turn into a two-year bill.” The bill, which Benton said CSHP wrote with the California Pharmacists Association, would allow pharmacists to In addition, the bill would create the designation “advanced practice pharmacist.” Such a pharmacist would be allowed to Senator Ed Hernandez, an optometrist, introduced the bill as part of a threesome on health care providers. The three bills seek to expand the scopes of practice for optometrists, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists. California, according to Hernandez, already has a “serious” shortage of primary care providers.

Nurse Staffing in Medical Units: A Queueing Perspective

In this paper, we present a closed queueing model to determine efficient nurse staffing policies. We explicitly model the workload experienced by s nurses within a single medical unit with n homogeneous patients as a closed M/M/s//n queueing system, where each patient alternates between requiring assistance and not. The performance of the medical unit is based on the probability of excessive delay, the relative frequency with which the delay between the onset of patient neediness and the provision of care from a nurse exceeds a given time threshold. Using new many-server asymptotic results, we find that effective staffing policies should deviate from threshold-specific nurse-to-patient ratios by factors that take into account the total number of patients present in the unit. In particular, our staffing rule significantly differs from California Bill AB 394, legislation that mandates fixed nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. Simulations show that our results are robust to delay-dependent service times, generally distributed service times, and nonhomogeneous patients, i.e., those with different acuity levels.

Nurse-to-Patient Ratios in Hospital Staffing: A Queueing Perspective

The immediate motivation of this paper is California Bill AB 394, legislation which mandates fixed nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as a means to address the current crisis in the quality of health care delivery. Modeling medical units as closed queueing systems, we seek to determine whether or not ratio policies are effective at managing nurse workload. Our many-server asymptotic results suggest that ratio policies cannot provide consistently high service quality across medical units of different sizes. As a remedy, we recommend policies that deviate from the restrictive linear nature of ratio policies, employing the square root rule commonly used to staff large service systems. Under some quality of care assumptions, our policies exhibit a type of super pooling effect, in which, for large systems, the requisite workforce is significantly smaller than the nominal patient load.

Union's M.D. Members Protest Support for Psychologist Prescribing

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Association NewsFull AccessUnion's M.D. Members Protest Support for Psychologist PrescribingRich DalyRich DalySearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:5 Oct 2007https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.42.19.0002Despite opposition from one of its affiliates, an influential union representing physicians is pushing adoption of a psychologist-prescribing bill. Talks are planned to try to resolve the standoff.For the first time, the California chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents 600,000 workers in the state, threw its considerable weight behind a state bill (SB 993) that would allow psychologists to prescribe psychotropic medications, as well as medications to treat the side effects of those psychoactive drugs.The bill is a much more wide-ranging approach to expanding psychologists' scope of practice than any of the several previous bills the state legislature has faced over the last dozen years. The California Senate's Committee on Business, Professions, and Economic Development voted in April to stop a prescribing bill for this year (Psychiatric News, August 17), but that reprieve is expected to be only temporary because of powerful allies psychologist-prescribing advocates gained this year. Among these new supporters is the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.The union-based effort in support of the legislative agenda of the California Psychological Association and the National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers came without the knowledge or backing of a California physicians union that is part of SEIU.“We are not supporting it,” a senior official with the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), who asked not to be identified, said about the prescribing bill in an interview with Psychiatric News.The CIR, which has been affiliated with the 1.6 million-member SEIU since May 1997, has begun discussions with the parent union regarding its support for the psychologist-prescribing bill. The CIR, which represents more than 12,000 house-staff physicians in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, has about 2,500 members in California.The CIR official would not comment on what outcome was expected from the discussions and downplayed the level of conflict, saying, “This is not an adversarial situation.”Representatives at the national office of SEIU and the SEIU California State Council—which is supporting the prescribing bill—did not return calls from Psychiatric News for comment by press time.The unions became involved in the California legislative campaign to allow psychologist prescribing as part of a membership strategy to recruit psychologists who work in state hospitals and prisons, according to Randall Hagar, director of government affairs for the California Psychiatric Association.The SEIU California State Council lists the bill on its Web site as one it is sponsoring. The SEIU, Hagar said, has made the bill a leading legislative priority and plans to earmark a substantial portion of a $50 million political war chest the council has set aside for “health issues” advocacy.The bill is needed, according to a statement by the California Psychological Association, because of the “lack of access to affordable psychiatric services in the community and the deterioration of services in California's state hospitals and prison system.”The bill's training and scope-of-practice authority, Hagar said, would likely allow psychologists to function as mental health patients' primary care providers with authority to commit them and to order restraints.Abigail Donovan, M.D., APA's member-in-training trustee, said that psychiatrists in training are uniquely positioned to join the fight against psychologist-prescribing privileges because they fully understand the extensive training, both didactic and clinical, that is needed to prescribe psychiatric medications in a safe and effective manner.“This is training that psychologists simply don't have and can't get through a limited 'prescribing' curriculum,” Donovan said. “As doctors, we are dedicated to the health and well-being of our patients; psychologists' prescribing psychiatric medication is not only bad medicine, but it is also potentially detrimental to the health of our patients.”She encouraged members of CIR to tell their union leadership that they oppose remaining affiliated with a union that supports psychologist-prescribing privileges. CIR's psychiatrist members could also contact their APA district branch for additional support, Donovan suggested, and other physicians could contact their local specialty society or medical society chapter.The presence of unions in the prescribing fight will require a new strategy to neutralize their impact in a legislature where they wield tremendous influence, Hagar said. The timing on that strategy is limited because the bill, defeated in committee, is allowed to return in 2008, during the second half of California's two-year legislative session.Previous efforts over the last 12 years to pass a psychologist-prescribing bill in California have rarely moved out of committee; however, a 2000 measure was approved by the state Assembly.The California bill is posted at<http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_993&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

State of the States 2006

State of the States 2006

Legislation: California Enacts Safe Cosmetics Act

Californians frustrated with what they consider the FDA’s loose control over cosmetic safety have taken matters into their own hands with the country’s first state cosmetics regulatory act, which takes effect in January 2007. The California Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005 will require manufacturers to report the use of potentially hazardous ingredients to the state Department of Health Services (DHS), which in turn will alert consumers. The DHS has the authority to investigate whether the product could be toxic under normal use and to require that manufacturers submit health effects data. Manufacturers that continue marketing products deemed unsafe in California could face legal action. “The legislation’s sponsors believe that the basis of the law is the public’s right to know,” says Kevin Reilly, DHS deputy director of prevention services. The new law uses the list of toxicants drawn up under California’s Proposition 65, which mandates that the governor publish a list, updated at least yearly, of chemicals that are known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. Although the new act applies only in California, its effects are likely to reverberate nationwide. Consumer advocates predict that manufacturers seeking to avoid negative publicity will remove, rather than report, suspect ingredients. Those formulas would then be marketed coast to coast. Impetus for the law stems from consumers’ concerns over long-term exposure to certain cosmetic ingredients. Cosmetic use has not been linked to chronic illnesses, but some products do contain carcinogens (such as formaldehyde, used in nail treatments), teratogens (such as lead acetate, used in two hair dyes), and other reproductive toxicants (such as di-n-butyl phthalate, used in nail treatments and dandruff shampoos). Studies in recent years have shown that humans absorb and inhale sometimes surprisingly high levels of toiletry ingredients. In the November 2005 issue of EHP, a team led by Susan M. Duty of the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrated that urine concentrations of phthalate metabolites increased by 33% with each personal care product—hair gel or spray, lotion, deodorant, cologne, aftershave—that subjects used. Historically, cosmetics safety has been in the hands of manufacturers; the FDA requires no premarket testing. Each year, an expert panel convened by the industry-funded Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) identifies priority ingredients for which it conducts literature reviews and analyses to determine safety. The panel—made up of independent academic researchers and representatives from industry, consumer interests, and the FDA—has declared 9 of the 1,286 ingredients reviewed since 1976 unsafe for normal cosmetic use. But manufacturers are not obligated to eliminate any ingredients—at least one ingredient identified as unsafe by CIR, hydroxyanisole, is still used. Safety advocates see evidence of any harm in any use as reason enough for a ban. “Ingredients suspected of causing cancer shouldn’t be used in cosmetics,” says spokesman Kevin Donegan of the Breast Cancer Fund, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that promoted the California bill. F. Alan Andersen, director and scientific coordinator of CIR, counters that the dose creates the danger. “We don’t subscribe to the notion that if there’s ever an adverse effect, [a chemical] must not be in a product people use,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense to us to apply the precautionary principle. Instead, we use a risk assessment approach, and the wide margins of safety that we have found for chemicals such as phthalates using this approach assure us that actual use of cosmetics is safe.” The law drew fierce opposition from individual companies and the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) as it worked its way through the California legislature. “CTFA supports strong federal regulation by the FDA,” says Kathleen Dezio, executive vice president of public affairs and communications for the association. “For this reason, CTFA has generally opposed state-specific legislation that would undermine this national approach and lead to an unworkable state-by-state patchwork of rules . . . or unjustified, extreme requirements that are well beyond those placed on any other category of food, beverages, drugs, or consumer products.” She adds that CTFA has met with the DHS and “pledged our cooperation in accomplishing the requirements” of the law. Some manufacturers have already ceded to public pleas for safer products. In the past two years, almost 350 of them signed a pledge promoted by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of health and environmental groups, to use no chemicals linked to cancer or birth defects. Industry leaders L’Oreal and Revlon broke new ground last year when they promised that products they sold in the United States would meet more stringent European Union standards. In 2004 Europe enacted a ban on suspected carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxicants in personal care products. “We’re definitely seeing a shift in the attitude of manufacturers,” Donegan says. “They’re starting to see the benefits of removing anything that could cause cancer.”