(All the following xxxxxx and more can be found at www.avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/sb-276. Please share.)
The roller coaster ride of SB276 continues…Please read to the bottom as there is important xxxxxx…
Meeting with Governor Staff
A Voice for Choice Advocacy was granted a meeting with a key Newsom staffer yesterday. We met with him for about half an hour and asked the Governor veto SB276, but understood that if there was an Amendment bill to SB276 that the Governor would likely sign it. If that was the case we asked for amendments that would make this process one where physicians can continue to do their job without the fear of being unnecessarily reviewed and where appropriate healthcare is being provided to children who are at risk of vaccine injury. They were amendments that would support doctors who are currently putting their licenses on the line because there are so few of them even willing to write MEs (attached). We were hopeful that we were heard, but…
SB714 Amendment bill (http://legxxxxxx.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB714)
Senator Pan gut and amended a bill – SB714 - to incorporate the amendments Governor Newsom requested, and more. The bill is now significantly worse than it was and very few of our concerns with SB276 were addressed. This will be voted on by the Assembly next week, followed by the Senate and then goes to the Governor’s desk. He has indicated he will sign both SB276 and this bill.
AVFCA Issues with SB714
Shout out to Greg Glaser for his fast review of our concerns to ensure our interpretation is correct.
120370. (a) (2) Commencing January 1, 2020, a child who has a medical exemption issued before January 1, 2020, shall be allowed continued enrollment to any public or private elementary or secondary school, child care center, day nursery, nursery school, family day care home, or developmental center within the state until the child enrolls in the next grade span.
For purposes of this subdivision, “grade span” means each of the following:
(A) Birth to preschool, inclusive.
(B) Kindergarten and grades 1 to 6, inclusive, including transitional kindergarten.
(C) Grades 7 to 12, inclusive.
(3) Except as provided in this subdivision, on and after July 1, 2021, the governing authority shall not unconditionally admit or readmit to any of those institutions specified in this subdivision, or admit or advance any pupil to 7th grade level, unless the pupil has been immunized pursuant to Section 120335 or the parent or guardian files a medical exemption form that complies with Section 120372.
This is what this means:
· Children with a medical exemption on file in 2020 under SB277 that are between grade spans have until July 2021 being grandfathered in. Thereafter they will need a ME that is based on CDC/ACIP/AAP Contraindications/Precautions to enter any grade. 99% of all children in all grades with current MEs will not qualify, and will be kicked out of school in July 2021.
· Children with a medical exemption on file in 2020 under SB277 that are starting school or going into Kindergarten or 7th grade, will need to submit a new ME, but it is not clear what criteria they will have to follow given the criteria only go into effect in July 2021. Also the form will not be available until 2021. If they have to follow the SB276 criteria then 99% will be kicked out of school.
· The parent will have to refile the medical exemption every year thereafter to be readmitted into school.
· Without this amendment, children who had an ME under SB277 would have been allowed to continue with school with their existing legal ME and were grandfathered in unless their doctor wrote more than 4 or their school fell below 95% vaccination rate. This amendment removes the ME for all children immediately if they are entering school, Kindergarten or 7th grade and removes it in July 2021 for all the remaining children with an ME regardless of where they are in grade level.
120372. (a) (G) Whether the medical exemption is permanent or temporary, including the date upon which a temporary medical exemption will expire. A temporary exemption shall not exceed one year. All medical exemptions shall not extend beyond the grade span, as defined in Section 120370.
This is what this means:
· This removes all permanent medical exemptions. All medical exemptions will have to be renewed by the physician and resubmitted at school entrance, Kindergarten and 7th grade. (Note: physicians are not allowed to charge for this per the bill)
120372. (c) (1)By January 1, 2021, the department shall create a standardized system to monitor immunization levels in schools and institutions as specified in Sections 120375 and 120440, and to monitor patterns of unusually high exemption form submissions by a particular physician and surgeon.
(d) (1) The department, at a minimum, shall annually review immunization reports from all schools and institutions in order to identify medical exemption forms submitted to the department and under this section that will be subject to paragraph
(2) A clinically trained immunization department staff member, who is either a physician and surgeon or a registered nurse, shall review all medical exemptions from any of the following:
(A) Schools or institutions subject to Section 120375 with an overall immunization rate of less than 95 percent.
(B) Physicians and surgeons who have submitted five or more medical exemptions in a calendar year beginning January 1, 2020.
(C) Schools or institutions subject to Section 120375 that do not provide reports of vaccination rates to the department.
(3) (A) The department shall identify those medical exemption forms that do not meet applicable CDC, ACIP, or AAP criteria for appropriate medical exemptions. The department may contact the primary care physician and surgeon or issuing physician and surgeon to request additional xxxxxxrmation to support the medical exemption.
What this means:
· There is no mechanism in place any more to collect the MEs that are submitted to the schools in 2020, so will this mean that medical exemptions will be sent from each school to CDPH separately, over email or some other non-secure format to determine the number of MEs written by each doctor. Why are doctors going to be monitored from next year, but the rest of the bill goes into effect in 2021?
· If a doctor has written over 4 MEs then even if the grandfathered ones did not have to comply with CDC/ACIP/AAP Contraindications/Precautions, they will now have to comply immediately.
Net, Net, there is no grandfathering in and all MEs are required to comply with CDC/ACIP/AAP Contraindications/Precautions by 2021 at the latest.
Press Conference
Thank you to Leigh Dundas and Advocates for Physician’s Rights for holding a press conference yesterday to discuss and amplify what A Voice for Choice Advocacy published in 2016 and then again a few months ago regarding the collusion and corruption with regard to Charity Dean, Senator Pan, the CMA and the CMB. You can watch the press conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7CYtDZjTU and read AVFCA press release from last month here:
What can you do?
· Please call and visit your Assembly member’s and Senator’s district office with the above bill concerns. Let them know that if they held off on the bill in the SB276 vote, that they need to do so again as the addition of SB714 makes it much worse.
· Tweet to Assembly members and Governor Newsom multiple times a day. Respond to tweets and retweet
· Donate to A Voice for Choice Advocacy (http://avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/donate/)
WE ARE STRONG AND WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE BUT WE HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING FOR OUR MEDICAL RIGHTS!
THANK YOU!!
C
Christina Hildebrand
President/Founder
A Voice for Choice Advocacy, Inc.
www.avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org
408 835 9353
Giving issues a voice, A Voice for Choice Advocacy advocates for people’s rights to be fully xxxxxxrmed about the composition, quality, and short- and long-term health effects of all products that go into people’s bodies, such as food, water, air, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
WWW.AVOICEFORCHOICEADVOCACY.ORG
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