Capitol Corner | April 2025

It’s April, Spring has sprung, and that means only one thing in the State Capitol – policy committee hearings are now upon us.

With the late February bill introduction deadline bringing us a total of 2,350 newly introduced bills, it is now time to hold hearings on the 850 of them introduced by Senators, and the 1,500 introduced by Assembly Members. The so-called 30 day “cooling off” period between the introduction deadline and the commencement of policy committee hearings proved to be a busy time in both houses of the Legislature with legislators and staff working feverishly with lobbyists, interest group representatives, their constituents and others to gather information and data on the subject matter of these legislative proposals, and to flesh them out as fully as possible before presenting them to committee members in sometimes painfully long hearings often stretching into the evening.

CAHSAH’s internal bill review process has also been completed (for now!) with our Policy, Advocacy, & Public Affairs (PAPA) Committee and its various subject matter subcommittees working with CAHSAH staff to review and analyze literally hundreds of bills.  We say “for now” because bills are being amended daily and often gutted completely so we still read, analyze, and review every bill that is modified in any way to determine how those changes might affect home care, home health, and hospice care in our state and the agencies that provide those critical services to patients and clients across California.

The PAPA Committee also determined the program for our Virtual Lobby Day scheduled for April 22-24 and what issues and bills will be prioritized during our scores of visits with legislators and staff during that period.  This year, we will focus our lobbying effort on:

• AB 315 (Bonta), a bill to increase access to Medi-Cal Home and Community based waiver programs.
• AB 510 (Addis), a bill to expedite the health plan appeal, review, and grievance process.
• AB 1400 (Soria), a bill to allow up to 15 California community college districts to offer BSN degrees.
• AB 1495 (Valencia), a home health aide training measure that allows online and distance training for these critical health care professionals.
• AB 412 (Limon), legislation addressing home care aide training in the area of Alzheimer’s and dementia care.
• Private Duty Nursing reimbursement rate increase.  This issue focuses on reinstating the $62 million budget allocation we secured in last year’s budget for private duty nursing that was negated by the passage of Proposition 35 last November.

If you care about issues like these and understand the importance of the legislative process and how it directly impacts our industry, it is imperative that you register and participate in CAHSAH’s Virtual Lobby Day.

Please also watch your email inboxes for CAHSAH Action Alerts on these and other bills and issues and reach out to your local legislators to support CAHSAH’s positions on these critical matters.