Capitol Corner | May 2024

Spring has sprung and there is no better illustration of that than what we saw in April in the State Capitol.  The last Friday of that month was the deadline for bills to be considered in policy committees in both the Assembly and Senate and sent on to their respective appropriations committees.  So, with the frenzied month of policy committee hearings behind us, it’s now on to fiscal committees and much focus on the upcoming 2024-25 state budget process.  In our world, we saw SB 1492 (Menjivar), the bill positioning Medi-Cal private duty nursing services to be eligible for funding from the newly expanded Managed Care Organization (MCO) tax move to the Senate Appropriations Committee.  We also saw bills in both houses – AB 2104 (Soria) and SB 895 (Roth) -- that create BSN pilot programs in up to 15 community college districts across the state both pass and move to their respective fiscal committees.  And in somewhat of a surprise, we saw AB 2185 (Jackson), a bill limiting how Domestic Referral Agencies (DRA’s) operate, not scheduled for a policy committee hearing and therefore ineligible to move forward this year.  And unfortunately, the same fate also came upon AB 3232 (Dahle), a bill to require California to participate in the interstate nurse registry reciprocal licensure compact.  This all occurred while CAHSAH conducted another successful Virtual Lobby Day event that saw our members meet with legislative offices throughout the Capitol to share our 2024 legislative agenda.  This important event also occurred while legislative leadership works with the Newsom Administration to grapple with what is now expected to be a $73 billion state budget deficit and how to structure an expected delay in implementation of the recently approved tiered $25 health care minimum wage that is scheduled to begin on June 1.  While all this was occurring in Sacramento, Congress continued its work on reining in  federal spending and the Biden Administration released the Medicaid Access Rule that includes the so-called 80/20 rule requiring states to ensure that 80 percent of Medicaid funding to states for Home & Community Based Services (HCBS) such as California's IHSS program and in certain Medi-Cal waiver programs, go directly to caregiver compensation.  April was obviously another chaotic month in the health care policy world, and we expect the month of May to be just as, if not more, challenging for us as we roam the halls of power in Sacramento representing the interests of your agencies and our entire industry!