HR 307 Amended and Passed in Senate

Yesterday the Senate amended and adopted HR 307, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013. The measure passed by unanimous consent without discussion.

The amendment adopted was the substitute language adopted in Committee. Now that we can see the version passed by the Senate, it is clear that this is the same language that was proposed by Sen. Burr (R,NC) in S 242.

The bill will now go back to the House for reconsideration or request for conference. The differences between the two bills are very minor; the House may just adopt the Senate amendments. I do expect fairly quick action on this either way.

HR 307 Reported in Senate

Yesterday the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions reported HR 307, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. There is no record on their web site of the proceedings of the Committee meeting where the amendment was adopted, so we have no real idea yet what the amendment entailed. I suspect that it was the language from S 242 that I discussed earlier. The bill may now be taken up by the whole Senate at any time.

Senate Version of Health Preparedness Bill Available

As I mentioned last week, Sen. Burr (R,NC) introduced S 242, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013, and it is now available through the GPO. I have had a quick chance to review the bill and it is not identical to HR 307 that passed in the House in January, but the differences are more in wording than in actual substance.

Public Health Assistance

The one exception to that that I see is found in §201 that amends §319 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d). The section deals with public health emergencies and both bills add a paragraph that allows for federally funded personnel to assist State and Indian Tribes in responding to such emergencies. The House bill calls this assistance ‘temporary redeployment’ and this bill calls it temporary reassignment. This hardly an earth shaking difference, but it could have some sort of personnel consequences that I am not aware of.

The major difference is buried down in §319(e)(3), “Voluntary Nature of Temporary Reassignment of State and Local Personnel”. This paragraph in the Senate bill makes it clear that the temporary reassignment is voluntary unless otherwise specified by State or Tribal law. There is no such provision in the House bill.

Still, there is not much here to get really worked up about in the difference between the two bills.

Moving Forward

I’m not sure what is going to happen here. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on HR 307 tomorrow. It’s going to be a busy hearing with lots of other things going on, so I don’t expect much time to be spent on HR 307. Having said that, Sen. Burr is a member of the Committee and the language from this bill may be offered as an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

If that amendment is adopted by the Committee (and I haven’t followed these folks closely enough to be able to offer an educated opinion on the likelihood of that happening) then it will be approved by the full Senate in one of those unanimous consent moves that attracts so little attention. Then it will be up to a Conference Committee to hash out the differences.

Bills Introduced 02-07-13

Yesterday, with only the Senate in session (the House was only in town for a short week) there were 38 pieces of legislation introduced. One of those was of potential interest to readers of this blog; S 242, bill to reauthorize certain programs under the Public Health Service Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to public health security and all-hazards preparedness and response, and for other purposes. This bill was introduced by Sen. Burr (R,NC).

This bill looks like it may be similar to HR 307, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013, that was passed last month in the House.  It would make little sense to introduce a companion bill when the House bill has already been referred to the Senate, so this may include some alternative language. Still that could have been handled with an amendment to the House bill, so we will have to wait and see what the bill actually says when it is published by the GPO.

Again, I would like to see it include a requirement for high-risk chemical facilities to notify local health agencies and hospitals of significant quantities of toxic inhalation chemicals used at those facilities so that there medical response community could be properly prepared for a mass casualty event if there were a large release of such materials either due to an accidental release or a terrorist attack.