California Health Care Bills

Department of Health Care Services Durable Medical Equipment General Healthcare Access Medical Diagnostic Equipment Published October 10, 2009

Nine bills were introduced this year that would reduce barriers to access to health care for people with disabilities.

AB 2 (De La Torre) Individual Health Care Coverage – Applications
Would require standard information and health history questions to be used health insurers for their individual health care coverage application forms.
AB 108 (Hiyashi) Individual Health Care Coverage – Cancellation
Would prohibit a health care service plan or health insurer from rescinding an individual health care service plan contract or individual health insurance policy for any reason, or from canceling, limiting, or raising the premiums of the plan contract or policy due to any omission, misrepresentation, or inaccuracy in the application form, after 24 months following the issuance of the plan contract or policy, except as specified.
AB 119 (Jones) Health Insurance Premiums and Gender
Would prohibit health insurers from charging a premium, price, or charge differential because of the sex of individuals.

AB 29 (Price) Dependent Coverage
Would prohibit, with some exceptions, limiting the age for dependent children covered by health care plans and group health insurance policies from being less than 27 years of age.
AB 214 (Chesbro) Durable Medical Equipment
Would require coverage for durable medical equipment as part of insurance plan contracts or health insurance policies.
AB 244 (Beall) Mental Health Coverage
Would expand coverage requirements to include the diagnosis and treatment of a mental illness of a person of any age and would define mental illness for this purpose as a mental disorder defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV.
SB 810 (Leno) Single Payer Health Care
Would make all California residents eligible for specified health care benefits under the California Healthcare System, which would, on a single-payer basis, negotiate for or set fees for health care services provided through the system and pay claims for those services.

AB 602 (Price) Prescription Coverage.
Would prohibit insurers from requiring prior authorization that requires the trial and failure of more than two formulary alternatives for pain treatment in advance of providing access to the prescribed drug, or requiring an enrollee or insured to try and fail on pain medication supported only by an off-label indication before providing access to a pain medication supported by an FDA-approved indication.
AB 722 (Lowenthal) Pre-existing Conditions.
Would prohibit denial of coverage to or allow exclusion of coverage due to a preexisting condition due to a mental or physical condition that is not life threatening nor chronic or severe, that is not considered to be a present condition at the time of enrollment, and for which the enrollee or insured has not received treatment for the past 12 months.