Its a been a busy Easter week.
Texas, of all places, is suddenly all for regulation. At least as far as telemedicine is concerned. The Texas Medical Board is pushing ahead with its new regulation forbidding teledocs from meeting with first-time patients over video.
Brokers and other industry experts have voiced their opinions, but have managed little more than a delay in the ruling. Its a delay many suspect is to circumvent the will of the Texas statehouse, which is already mulling over a trio of bills to trump the TMB's new rule, since the final ruling been pushed back until after the legislative recess.
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It's a tactic broker Tanya Boyd is battling.
"Brokers should contact their congressman immediately, and reach out to all their members and clients who could be affected by this," she says. "We've had a campaign going for a couple weeks now at my office. We call and follow up with an email. Having a system that makes it easy for the client to take action is key. We've had hundreds of willing clients, eager to do whatever it takes to keep their telemedicine in Texas."
Remember telemedicine.
A little to the north, lawmakers in Arkansas have quickly rewritten and overwhelmingly passed that state's religious freedom law after Gov. Asa Hutchinson threatened an earlier version with the veto pen.
Indiana has already followed suit after intense blowback, put lawmakers on their heels. Social media exploded, even some Republicans protested, and — perhaps most importantly — businesses threatened to pull operations from the Hoosier State.
Guess you could it call democracy — or dollars — action.
Finally, in numbers news:
36,000. That's the number of applicants who've signed up for PPACA through March 29 during its special, extended, enrollment period. That number falls far short of the 220,000 many expected. The extended enrollment runs until the end of the month. But its anyone guess if the subsidies will.
126,000. That's how many employees were added to payroll in March. Again its a number that fell short of expectations, sending markets reeling and the Fed to maybe revisit its plans to tweak interest rates. Not such a Good Friday, after all.
300. The number of anti-abortion bills that were filed in statehouses in 43 states so far this year, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute. So much for jobs being priority No. 1.
$352 million. That's how much money Govs. Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry "collecitvely applied for and won .. through grant programs set up by [PPACA]," according to a review of federal records and reporting by Reuters. All four are fervent opponents of the law who are also expected to run for president, in part, no doubt, based on that opposition. Can't wait to hear that spin.
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