2014 Session Proposals
Summary of the 2014 State Legislative Proposals
AP – Senior Assembly Proposal SP – Senior Senate Proposal
AP-11 – Prescriptions: Purpose of Medication: Labeling
This proposal requires all prescribers to include the purpose of the medication in prescriptions so that the prescription drug label may include that purpose, unless the patient or the prescriber requests this information to be omitted.
AP-4 – Personal Income Tax: Voluntary Contribution: California Senior Legislature
This proposal would allow filers of corporate tax return form 100 and partnership return form 565 to contribute amounts in excess of their tax liability for the support of the California Senior Legislature Fund.
SP-9 – Silver Alert Program
This proposal would delete the repeal of the existing Silver Alert provisions and make the Silver Alert program permanent.
SP-13 – Health Care: California Death with Dignity Act
This proposal would authorize adult California residents who are mentally competent and terminally ill to make a request to receive medication for the purpose of ending their lives in a humane and dignified manner.
AP-6 – Health Care: Dementia Training
This proposal requires paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and hospital staff to receive, as a part of their continuing education, dementia training from specified entities.
AP-5 – Fall Risk Screening: Education for Health Care Providers
This proposal would require the State Department of Public Health to develop and implement a fall risk screening education program aimed at health care providers and administrators, require the State Department of Public Health to work with the California Medical Association to have fall risk reduction, fall risk screenings, and assessments made part of the required continuing education for physicians, and encourage health care providers to conduct a simple fall risk screening on all older adult patients to ascertain which patients should be referred for more in-depth assessments to determine the causes of their elevated fall risk.
This proposal would impose a 2-year punishment enhancement for a felony conviction of these provisions when the crime is against a victim who is 65 years of age or older.
This proposal would require an elder-friendly court to be established in each county in California.
AP-29 – Medi-Cal:Long-Term Care: Personal Needs Allowance
This proposal would increase the personal needs allowance from $35 to $80 per month and annually adjust the personal needs allowance by the same percentage as the Consumer Price Index.
SP-1 – Alzheimer’s Disease: Prevention and Early Intervention Programs
This proposal requires funds be made available, or clarify that mental health services act funds may be used, for programs that provide education, prevention, and early intervention programs and services with respect to Alzheimer’s Disease.
The following were identified as the Top Four 2014 Federal Legislative proposals:
SFP-3 – Public Housing Priority for Senior Veterans
This proposal would give priority for public housing assistance to eligible seniors who are honorably discharged veterans.
AFP-6 – Fund the Elder Justice Act
This proposal would fully fund the Elder Justice Act as quickly as possible and to begin this process by appropriating the $25,000,000 requested in the President’s 2015–16 fiscal year budget proposal.
AFP-5 – A Comprehensive Drug Trial Act
This proposal requires clinical drug and medical device trials regulated by the Food and Drug Administration to be conducted in a manner that eliminates upper age limits for study inclusion, reduces the use of eligibility criteria that disproportionately affect older patients, and encourages adherence to recommended analytical methods for evaluating treatment effects by age.