LEGISLATIVE UPDATE-- BAD NEWS!

The Public Health Committee sent their bill to the floor of the Senate (this was SB 579); it was favorably reported on by the Legislative Commissioner's Office. Unfortunately, special interests prevailed on the floor of the State Senate and it was sent to the well-intentioned Insurance and Real Estate Committee. You may recall that earlier this spring, the Insurance and Real Estate Committee revised the bill that would have prompted insurers to cover life-saving weight loss surgery; they, instead, opted to send to the General Assembly the seminal proposal to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of requiring insurers to cover bariatric surgery. Of course, notwithstanding the wealth of cost analysis that are already available , the only way to effectively kill this proposal without incurring all the wrath that such a mean-spirited decision would incur is to couch their servitude to the insurance industry behind a sincere desire to safeguard the purse strings of those small employers and municipalities whose insurance rates would increase were bariatric surgery to be required. Now, with such demonstrated dedication to the public weal as they have already evidenced, you would think that they would at least timely decide whether to abide by the decision of their colleagues on the Public Health Committee and send SB 579 back to the floor. But, instead they simply tabled the proposal-- rest assured, it will die in their committee and with it so too will all those who suffer from morbid obesity and can not find the cure for their hypertension, sleep apnea and type II diabetes that bariatric surgery brings. Although our pleas will probably fall on deaf ears, we should all once again write and call the members of the Insurance and Real Estate Committee and demand that they report SB 579 (File Number 338) back to the floor of the Senate where it deserves an up-or-down vote on its own merits.