Banning Dangerous Chemicals affecting Children

Banning Dangerous Chemicals Affecting Children
On January 1, 2012, child care articles, including bottles and sippy cups, can no longer be manufactured or sold in Maryland with the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA). According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), BPA can leach from the linings of canned foods and polycarbonate water and baby bottles, resulting in possible health risks to the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children.

Prohibiting Fraud in the Medicaid System
The Maryland False Claims Act (SB 279) will protect Maryland against theft and fraud in the State's Medicaid budget. Under current law, the state can do little to recover dollars paid out through false claims against the Medicaid program. The State's only recourse is to bring administrative actions against suspected perpetrators, but this painstaking process limits any recovery to only actual losses, with no penalties or damages to deter repeat offenders.

The federal program, started in 1986, has recovered $24 billion to the government. Additional studies have shown that for every $1 spent on fraud enforcement, the government has recovered $15. However, the reach of the Federal FCA is limited and now States are enacting False Claims Acts to increase recoveries. Virginia, for example, recovered $100 million in the two years after it enacted an FCA. Prior to enacting an FCA, the Commonwealth recovered approximately $20 million.

Creating a new Commission to Implement Federal Healthcare Reforms
During the legislative session, Governor O'Malley signed an Executive Order creating the Maryland Health Care Reform Coordinating Council. Maryland is already a national model for controlling health care costs under Maryland's unique “all-payer” hospital rate setting system. This term, Maryland has extended health care coverage to 161,000 Marylanders, 78,500 of which are children, under the Working Families and Small Business Health Coverage Act. The Maryland Health Care Reform Coordinating Council will consist of private sector, government and legislative members and assist the executive and legislative branches of state government with the delivery of health care reforms from the federal level to the homes and businesses of Main Street Maryland.

Assignment of Benefits
The legislature also passed Senate Bill 314 that streamlines and improves the process for reimbursement of out-of-network physicians and protects consumers from unexpected and costly medical bills. The initial version of the legislation allowed for a patient to be “balanced-billed”, meaning that a hospital-based physician such as an anesthesiologist or emergency room doctor, could charge a patient for any services related to a hospital visit when the physician is not in the patient's insurance network. House leaders removed that provision before final passage. Now, patients will be protected from the surprise of additional charges during hospital visits.