BOISE, ID – An Idaho House committee on Friday rejected a bill meant to repeal vaccine requirements, but which critics said could have restricted access to medical care.
House Bill 808 proposed expanding on Idaho law passed last year that banned businesses, schools and governments from requiring people get medical treatment, diagnosis or vaccines. Last year’s law drew praise from U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The new bill proposed repealing laws that require childhood vaccines; changing Idaho’s immunization records system to opt in; and blocking local governments from violating the state’s so-called medical freedom law passed last year. Idaho parents can already exempt their kids from vaccines rules.
Major groups opposed the bill, including the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a powerful business lobbying group, the Idaho Hospital Association and the Idaho Association of Counties and Association of Idaho Cities.
Idaho Hospital Association Vice President Toni Lawson told lawmakers that some of the bill’s language would prevent staff in county and district hospitals from serving their communities.
“Given that the definition of medical intervention includes any medical action taken to diagnose, prevent or cure disease, this makes it basically impossible for health care providers and hospitals to fulfill their role in the community,” Lawson told lawmakers.
The bill was written by Health Freedom Defense Fund President and Founder Leslie Manookian and sponsored by Rep. Robert Beiswenger, R-Horseshoe Bend,
The House Health and Welfare Committee voted to hold the bill in committee, effectively preventing it from advancing this legislative session.
Rep. Dori Healey, a Republican from Boise and a nurse, asked the bill be halted. She said the term medical intervention, used throughout the bill in specifying what actions are banned, is much more than it may seem.
“It’s antibiotics, insulin, inhalers, emergency medications like epinephrine. And that is used in so many lines,” she said. “… I think that the whole bill needs to be scrapped and brought back another time.”
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