New California Laws – Healthcare Related

Well first on the list is text messaging and that can have an immediate effect on healthcare in helping avoid accidents, and one more of interest that is that students can be expelled for making purchases on the internet while in class. One good thing is now we can have mounted GPS units on the dashboard, so at least we know where we are going.

If you are under the influence of alcohol, insurance companies can’t use that to refuse paying medical bills, wonder why this law came about, perhaps this has been challenged in court. Advanced directives will become much more popular as it is now the physician’s responsibility to give full information about the end of life options. HIV testing will now be a requirement for insurers to cover too.

If your insurance is cancelled, the rest of the family can keep their health insurance, again, wonder why this law is here, but perhaps it too was challenged in court at some point. I really wonder how this works if your entire family is under your plan from work, you get cancelled, but yet the family can still be insured under the policy? I’m sure there might be more information coming on this one soon.

Privacy issues, if you have a card using RFID information, it is now a misdemeanor to capture and use that information. From a back story, that can be done easier than you think. There are many more that can be read at the source, but these are the ones that are healthcare related. BD

LOS ANGELES -- Californians must abide by dozens of new state laws taking effect Jan. 1, including bans on text-messaging while driving.

Meat safety: Makes it a misdemeanor to buy, sell or butcher sick and some disabled animals for human consumption.

Medical care: Requires doctors treating terminally ill patients to give them comprehensive information about end-of-life options, such as hospice care at home and the right to refuse treatment.

Medical insurance: Requires that when insurers cancel someone's coverage, they allow other members of the family to keep theirs.

Another law prevents insurers from refusing to pay the medical bills of customers injured while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

A third new law requires insurers to pay for HIV screening.

Privacy: Makes it a misdemeanor to use radio waves, without consent, to remotely read another person's identifying information. The measure is in response to the practice of having personal identification information included on government-issued identification cards that can be read with radio-frequency identification devices.