Editor’s note: Look in Thursday’s Gazette-Mail for the health related bills the Legislature voted to pass.
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During its just-ended regular session, the West Virginia Legislature considered several health-related bills.
Among those that passed was a bill splitting the state’s health department into three agencies, another that, with Gov. Jim Justice’s approval, would alter the regulatory process for health care providers seeking to expand, and one that would restrict gender-confirming care for young people in West Virginia.
Here’s a look of some of the bills that didn’t make it.
House Bill 3274
- , creating the Affordable Medicaid Buy-in Program.
The bill would have required the Bureau of Medical Services to apply to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for a Basic Health Plan option under Section 1331 and or a state innovation waiver under section 1332 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
According to the federal Bureau of Medical Services, through the Basic Health Program, states can provide coverage to citizens or lawfully present noncitizens, who do not qualify for Medicaid, CHIP or other minimum essential coverage and have income between 133 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
In a news release, West Virginians for Affordable Health Care said the new program is designed to address the problems caused by high premiums and deductibles in the current system in which low-wage workers earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford other options.
The bill passed 73-19 in the House of Delegates on Feb. 25, but it was still pending in the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee at the end of the legislative session.
Senate Bill 489
- , requiring boards of education to provide free feminine hygiene products in certain grades.
The bill would have required county school boards to provide free feminine hygiene products in grades six through 12 to female students who do not otherwise have access to the products.
The bill passed in the Senate 32-1. The bill then was passed by the House Education Committee March 8, three days before the end of the session. It had a second reference to the House Finance Committee, which did not take it up.
House Bill 3101
- , relating to notification of breast density.
A committee substitute for the bill would have required that, when mammography screening indicates that a patient has heterogeneously or extreme dense breasts, that be noted in the patient’s summary. The summary also would have noted that dense breast tissue can make it difficult to find cancer and increases risk of developing breast cancer. The bill passed unanimously in the House of Delegates. In the Senate, it was referred to the Health and Human Resources Committee, where it was still pending at the end of the session.
Senate Bill 243
- , requiring substance use disorder inpatient providers to give transportation to patients.
The bill failed after the House of Delegates refused to concur with a Senate amendment that struck a provision of the bill that said, if a patient’s transportation is provided under Medicaid as a nonemergency medical transportation benefit, the patient may not be transported to an out-of-state location more than 30 miles past the state border and substituted a requirement that providers are solely responsible for the patient’s out-of-state transportation costs.
