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Georgia Representatives spent most of Tuesday in chambers — voting on bills to meet Thursday’s Crossover Day deadline. Today is a committee workday before Thursday’s deadline to move bills out of one chamber to the other. Bills passed out of the House Tuesday include a revision of the state’s certificate of need process for hospitals, a floating statewide exemption and tax incentives for data centers across the state.
House Bill 1339 by Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, sailed through by a 166-1 vote with strong bipartisan support. The bill, which the sponsor says is “the beginning of the journey,” would ease regulations that govern the construction and expansion of hospitals in counties with fewer than 50,000 people. It would also increase the pool of tax credits from $75 million to $100 million for taxpayers who donate to rural hospitals.
The bill includes a “Comprehensive Health Coverage” study commission that would review access to health care for low-income and uninsured people. But does not provide for an expansion of Medicaid.
“This is a good start,” said Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville. “I ask you to support this bill to help Georgia move forward and make sure all Georgians have access to quality healthcare.”
The bill would take a more limited approach to scaling back the regulatory system – CON– compared with a full repeal of CON regulations sought in the Georgia Senate.
The legislation would shorten the timeline for review of hospitals’ applications and strengthen penalties for failing to produce required hospital reports.
Lawmakers also voted, 96-71, for HB 1192, that would suspend issuance of any new exemption certificates for high-technology data centers, starting on July 1. Entities with ongoing contracts entered into before that date wouldn’t be affected. The exemption…
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