Entrance to Senate Chambers in the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The state Senate Health Committee cleared three bills Thursday, two of them on bipartisan votes, advancing them to the full Senate for consideration.
SB 4 allows direct primary care doctors, who charge patients on a monthly subscription, to practice without being regulated as part of the insurance industry.
The bill passed 3-2, with the Senate committee’s two Democrats, Sens. Jeff Smith and Dora Drake, voting against recommending it for passage.
Drake said she voted against the measure because it lacked non-discrimination language that had been included in a previous version of the bill.
The bill from the 2023-24 legislative session included a non-discrimination section listing a series of civil-rights protections for patients. One of those items, forbidding discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” led two organizations, Wisconsin Family Action and the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, to oppose the legislation.
Although the legislation passed the Assembly on a voice vote in 2024 and was unanimously endorsed by both the Assembly and Senate health committees, it died after the state Senate failed to take it up.
The current bill states that direct primary care providers “may not decline to enter into or terminate a direct primary care agreement with a patient solely because of the patient’s health status.”
It has replaced language enumerating specific civil rights protections with a more general stipulation that it “shall not be construed to limit the application” of Wisconsin’s civil rights statute to a health care provider’s practice. The civil rights law bars discrimination based on race, sex and sexual orientation, but is silent on gender identity.
“As Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, I refuse to support a new version of a bill that doesn’t provide protections for Wisconsinites that prevents discrimination from healthcare providers,” Drake told the Wisconsin Examiner via email.
The committee voted unanimously Thursday to recommend the other two bills.
SB 23 would make it possible for women who are covered by Medicaid in childbirth to maintain that coverage for a full year after the child is born. The postpartum Medicaid legislation has broad bipartisan support, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has opposed extending the coverage, claiming it would expand “welfare.”
SB 14 requires health care providers to obtain a patient’s consent when they teach medical students how to do pelvic exams by having them practice on women under anesthesia. Authors of the bill and advocates have reported that some providers have a history of training students on the procedure with unconscious patients who have not been informed or given consent.
The committee also added a requirement that hospitals institute written policies for informed consent relating to pelvic exams under anesthesia. The amendment replaces language requiring an administrative rule implementing the requirement.
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