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PA Senate preps public health bill

The Pennsylvania Senate is calling on its colleagues in the House to take some action that it says might set the state in a better position to respond to a potential coronavirus pandemic or other future health emergency.

A letter from Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa to Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Mike Turzai, Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, and Rep. Kathy Rapp, chairwoman of the health committee, indicates that the senate has passed a bill introduced by Costa that would create a mechanism by which the state could declare a “public health emergency declaration.”

It would be similar to the emergency declaration already available in the state that is used in cases of natural disasters. The governor has the authority to declare an emergency situation in the state.

The public health emergency declaration would be “better suited to a medical crisis,” according to Costa’s Press Secretary Brittany Crampsie.

That senate bill has passed each of the last two sessions, Costa said, unanimously this year.

It has not been introduced on the House floor, instead it has “languished” in the House Health Committee, according to Costa.

Rapp responded to that statement on Thursday.

“The reason we haven’t moved the bill is because we believe the governor already has that authority,” she said.

The bill would also assign the authority to make an emergency declaration to the state’s secretary of health, she said. The committee has reservations about the “necessity of giving that authority to another person in the administration.”

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