State Senator Gustavo Rivera - SEVENTEEN BILLS MOVE THROUGH COMMITTEE DURING SIXTH MEETING OF THE SENATE HEALTH COMMITTEE

  The Senate Health Committee, chaired by State Senator Gustavo Rivera, moved through committee the 17 bills that were up for a vote on today's committee agenda. 

"Today, the Health Committee took decisive steps to ensure New Yorkers have the tools and information they need to improve and protect their health. We passed a number of measures to protect children from anaphylactic shock, require chain restaurants to label menu items with high content of sodium, and protect New Yorkers in adult care facilities from the dangers of secondhand smoke exposure. We also continued to tackle maternal mortality and the opioid epidemic, two issues greatly impacting New Yorkers across the our State," said State Senator Gustavo Rivera. "Further, we moved a common sense bill that will allow New Yorkers under 16 years old to operate lemonade stands without a health permit in order to promote entrepreneurship among our youth."

During today's meeting, the following bills were voted for the following bills in the following categories:

ENSURING CHILDREN'S SAFETY AND WELL-BEING: 

• S218A (Benjamin) - Bill to require anaphylactic policies for child care services.

• S3834 (Metzger) - Bill to provide certain professional services to children's camps and camps for children with developmental disabilities.

• S2599 (Parker) - Bill to authorize and direct the department of health to do research and study as to the effects of psychostimulants, selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors, antidepressants and other drugs which are prescribed for attention deficit disorders, ADD and ADHD, for school age children.

IMPROVING OUR STATE'S PUBLIC HEALTH INDICATORS:

• S2873 (Carlucci) - Bill to ban smoking in adult care facilities.

• S4930 (Rivera) - Bill to require chain restaurants to label menu items that have a high content of sodium.

• S1307 (Serino) - Bill to report lyme and tick-borne disease infection after death.

REDUCING NEW YORK'S MATERNAL MORTALITY RATE:

• S3158 (Ramos) - Bill to provide a premium reduction for obstetric practitioners who complete a risk management strategies course.

COMBATING THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC IN NEW YORK:

• S1668 (Brooks) - Bill to require that on death certificates for persons whose death is caused by an opioid overdose, the specific opioid responsible is included.

• S4277A (Harckham) - Bill to require health practitioners to discuss with patients the risks associated with certain pain medications before prescribing such medications; and in relation to opioid analgesic prescriptions.

OTHER IMPORTANT BILLS THAT WERE MOVED THROUGH COMMITTEE: 

• S762 (Tedisco) - Bill to exempt lemonade stands operated by persons under sixteen years of age from department of health permitting requirements.

• S1728 (Skoufis) - Bill to establish hospital-sponsored off campus emergency departments

• S1811 (Rivera) - Bill that relates to the appointment of the state medicaid director.

• S1816 (Rivera) - Bill to integrate home care into the state's public health and prevention efforts.

• S4475 (Montgomery) - Bill to define "person" in parental relationship to a child.

• S4582 (Sanders) - Bill to conform the definition of palliative care throughout the public health law.

• S4841 (Rivera) - Bill that relates to the execution of orders not to resuscitate and orders pertaining to life sustaining treatments by physician assistants.

• S5000 (Parker) - Bill to establish the nurse loan repayment program.