3 Feb 2009

Winston Churchill said, "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." During the past few days I have spent the majority of my time glued to my computer screen either copying and pasting legislator names and emails to a list of what committees they are on or doing research for HB 17 which deals with Expedited Patient Therapy(EPT) or Patient Directed Patient Therapy (PDPT) which basically deals with provided someone who has an STD specifically Gonorrhea or Chlamydia with medicine for there unnamed partners. One of the unintended consequences of this bill which could be potentially disastrous is that "If this bill becomes law, a person could get a prescription with your name on it and drop it off at a pharmacy that electronically sends it to your insurance company. But you might have no idea the prescription exists.
A dishonest person could name you even if you did not have a sexual relationship with him or her. And, unfortunately, the one-time dosage of the recommended antibiotic is specific to this disease; thus it is clear to a pharmacy and insurance company that the prescription is for chlamydia."(Lousie-Anne McNutt, timesunion.com) There are also other unintended consequences of this bill passing that make me leery of it.
One of the other things I have done is set in several committee meetings. Those meetings were Political Subdivisions Committee where the most controversial issue discussed involved impact fees accessed to public and charter schools. The other meeting I went to was the Commerce and Workforce Services Joint Appropriations Subcommittee where the budgets for the Alcohol Beverage Commission, Finical Institutions and Public Service Commission were discussed. To sum up this meeting I can only think of the words that Ronald Reagan said, "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."