Looking Back, While Looking Forwards: CMA Releases Their 2020 Legislative Wrap October 26, 2020 Advocacy, CMA 0 “As 2019 concluded, reasonable assumptions about 2020 began to emerge. The year was expected to be busy and more polarizing due to the presidential election occurring in November…” and then, “in March, the world changed, and California politics and the legislative process went through an unprecedented transformation.” Although CMA describes the 2020 legislative year in California as “completely unpredictable” and “totally chaotic,” this year concluded with legislative wins for physicians statewide: “CMA successfully maintained state funding for physician services, defeated proposals to increase or add new administrative burdens onto physicians, and secured a number of Executive Orders to protect medical practices as they faced a pandemic unlike any seen in the past century." Of particular interest for our San Francisco and Marin physicians: successfully passing SB 793 (Hill), the ban of flavored tobacco products (p.3), successfully building upon AB 744 (Aguir-Curry 2019), which required payment parity by commercial health plans, for services provided via telehealth, the first step to have telehealth visits covered at the same rate as in-person services (p.3), and protecting $1.2 Billion in Proposition 56 funding for supplemental physician and dental payments, family health screenings, and more (p.2). To read the full legislative wrap up click HERE and for more details on the major bills that CMA followed this year, visit cmadocs.org/leg-wrap-2020. As Janus L. Norman, CMA Senior Vice President at CMA’s Centers for Government Relations and Political Operations, reminds us: “...there will be a consistent truth among all the unpredictable chaos: CMA will always be in the midst of every critical political and legislative battle, utilizing our resources to advance an agenda that protects physician practices and empowers the physician voice.” Comments are closed.
