Analysis by National Vaccine Information CenterFact Checked
September 27, 2019
Story at-a-glance
In 2010, the
National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) launched the NVIC Advocacy
Portal, a free online vaccine choice advocacy network, for the purpose
of securing and defending informed consent protections in vaccine
policies and laws
During the 2019
legislative session, 22 bills across 17 states were filed to attempt to
eliminate vaccine exemptions. Three bills passed, 12 died and seven are
still pending in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and Wisconsin
While media
hyped bills attacking exemptions, there were almost as many bills to
expand informed consent rights as there were to eliminate or restrict
those rights. This can be directly credited to positive action taken by
forward-thinking state legislators given fact-based information about
vaccines, exemptions and diseases by concerned citizens who took the
time to make one-on-one personal contact with their elected
representatives
Of the 137 vaccine-related bills NVIC opposed, only 18 bad bills passed
It is critical
that vaccine choice advocates in every state register for and check in
to the NVIC Advocacy Portal. The most important thing you can do is to
establish relationships with and educate your legislators now and into
next year so you can be ready to counter bills that will restrict or
eliminate exemptions and get good bills filed to protect and expand
vaccine exemptions
Citizen involvement in the legislative
process to protect the human right to exercise informed consent to
vaccination increased to unprecedented levels in 2019 to meet the most
aggressive and unwarranted attack on vaccine exemptions in U.S. history.
In a 2019 Annual Report on U.S. State Vaccine Legislation, the nonprofit educational charity National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
reports that during the 2019 legislative session, 22 bills across 17
states were filed to attempt to eliminate vaccine exemptions.
Three bills passed, 12 died and seven bills are still pending in
California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the
time of writing. Status on all bills in this report reflect their
positions on September 9, 2019.
Working to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public
education since 1982, NVIC is the largest and oldest U.S. charity
disseminating information about diseases, vaccines and informed consent
to vaccination.
NVIC provides well-referenced, accurate information to the public
about vaccine science, policy and law but does not make vaccine use
recommendations. In 2010, NVIC launched the NVIC Advocacy Portal
(NVICAP), a free online vaccine choice advocacy network, for the
purpose of securing and defending informed consent protections in
vaccine policies and laws.
NVIC works alongside and shares legislative information with many
health freedom groups that support NVIC's more than three-decade call
for the protection of vaccine informed consent rights in America.
The NVIC Advocacy Portal team, including key NVIC advocacy directors
in many states, works with families and enlightened health care
professionals to educate legislators and protect vaccine informed
consent rights.
During the 2019 legislative session, NVIC analyzed, tracked and
issued positions on an unrivaled 221 vaccine related bills and five sets
of rules in the following 40 states and the District of Columbia
through the NVICAP: Alabama,
Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of
Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana,
Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Forty-two vaccine-related bills are still pending in California,
District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and action to support the good bills and
fight against the bad bills is still needed.
Bills referenced in this report are published on the NVICAP
and registered users can obtain a more detailed bill analysis,
including current status, NVIC's position on the bill and recommended
action.
Highlights From 2019
There were significant positive takeaway points from the outcome of the 2019 legislative session:
Of the 40 bills filed across 22 states (Alabama, Arizona,
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine,
Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin) to either
eliminate or restrict some vaccine exemptions, five passed: California
SB 276 and SB 714, Maine LD 798, New York A2371A, and Washington EHB
1638; 12 are pending and 23 died
Of the 137 vaccine-related bills that NVIC opposed, only 18 bad bills passed
The 2019 legislative session featured more proposed vaccine-related
bills worthy of support (77) than any legislative session since the
launching of NVIC's Advocacy Portal in 2010.
There were six states with 10 or more vaccine-related bills filed
this session. Texas has the record with 29 bills; New York can be
credited with 19; New Jersey currently has 13; Arizona finished with 11,
and Connecticut and Iowa both ended sessions with 10 bills each.
The remaining vaccine-related bills that either passed or were
defeated in states during the 2019 legislative session are broken out
and described below by category.
Advertisement
2019 Bill Analysis by Category
The four main areas that NVIC focuses on when tracking proposed bills are:
Vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights
Vaccine mandates
Vaccine tracking and reporting
Vaccines in general
Some bills may be included in multiple categories. For example, a
proposed bill attempting to mandate a vaccine may also have a
requirement for vaccine tracking so it would be counted in both
categories but only counted once in the total bill count.
The NVIC Advocacy team provides referenced, accurate vaccine
information and talking points for NVICAP users to background
legislators. Some of the position statements NVIC posted on the Advocacy
Portal in 2019 were listed as bills to "watch" because our analysis
indicated they contained sections that could be vulnerable to amendments
that would conflict with NVIC's mission.
The breakout and analysis of bills in these different categories
identify trends across the states and serve as a guide if you want to
become active by joining the NVIC Advocacy Portal (NVICAP) and educating
your state legislators and community in 2020 about why it is so
important to protect vaccine informed consent rights.
Vaccine Exemptions and Informed Consent (122 Bills)
The surprising story about this session is that of the 122
vaccine-related bills filed in state legislatures in 2019, which had
components that affected vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights,
NVIC opposed 63 of the proposed bills, but supported 58 and "watched"
one.
Media tended to hype the bills attacking exemptions so much that it
may come as a surprise that there were almost as many bills to expand
informed consent rights as there were to eliminate or restrict those
rights.
This can be directly credited to positive action taken by
forward-thinking state legislators who were given fact-based information
about vaccines, exemptions, and diseases by concerned citizens who took
the time to make one-on-one personal contact with their elected
representatives.
Eliminating or Restricting Vaccine Exemptions
The most significant concerning trend coming out of the 2019
legislative cycle is that 40 bills were filed to either remove or
restrict vaccine exemptions in the following 22 states: Alabama,
Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois,
Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada,
New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington and
Wisconsin.
There were 22 bills filed in the following 17 states attempting to
eliminate vaccine exemptions: Alabama, Arizona, California, Iowa,
Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Of these
22 bills, three passed; seven are still pending and need strong
opposition; and the other 12 failed to pass.
Maine LD 798 eliminated both the religious and philosophical exemptions and goes into effect September 1, 2021. This bill narrowly passed the house and senate and families in Maine need to work with legislators to repeal the removal of these exemptions.
New York A 2371A eliminated the religious exemption in one day with no public hearings and the law goes into effect immediately leaving only a restrictive medical exemption.
There are ongoing legal efforts by Children's Health Defense to challenge the new law and the implementation schedule. New York's repeal of the religious exemption violates the rights of the disabled under The Rehabilitation Act Of 1973. The religious exemption in New York needs to be reinstated by the legislature in 2020.
Washington EHB 1638 eliminated personal and philosophical exemptions
to MMR vaccines only, leaving philosophical exemptions for all other
vaccines and religious and medical exemptions for all vaccines including
MMR as of July 28, 2019. It could have been much worse, as WA SB 5841
attempted to remove all religious and philosophical exemptions for all
vaccines, but this bill was unnecessary.
Seven remaining bills still active, which are attempting to remove exemptions that deserve strong vigilant opposition, are:
California AB 283 seeking to eliminate the personal belief exemption for young children using the CalWORKs assistance program
New Jersey A 3818, which is trying to eliminate the religious exemption
Massachusetts H.3999 and HD 4284, which are trying to remove the religious exemption
Pennsylvania SB 653, which is aiming for the removal of religious and philosophical exemptions,
Wisconsin AB 248 and SB 262 that would strike personal conviction vaccine exemptions
Although not included in this report's 2019 tally of bills, it is
worth highlighting a highly aggressive early attack on the vaccine
exemptions in Florida. SB 64 was filed in advance of the 2020
legislative session by Florida state Sen. Lauren Book, a Broward County Democrat, to eliminate the religious exemption and restrict the medical exemption.
Florida families can refer to the alert and information on the NVIC Advocacy Portal on how to communicate with legislators about opposing this bill and asking the bill sponsor to withdraw the bill.
There have been 18 bills and two sets of rules proposed to restrict
vaccine exemptions across these 12 states: California, Colorado (both a
bill and a rule), Connecticut, Hawaii (rule), Illinois, Massachusetts,
Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
So far, only two of the bills have passed, California SB 276 and SB
714, which together significantly restrict the medical exemption. Four
bills in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania remain active and
need strong opposition.
In Hawaii, a new rule was unfortunately adopted and signed by the
governor to restrict the medical exemption by confining it to the
restrictive language "due to a stated cause" and "in conformance with
recognized standard medical practices."
"Recognized standard medical practices" means in accordance with the
United States Department of Health and Human Services' Advisory
Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), General Best Practice
Guidelines for Immunization and future amendments that are adopted by
the department.
This restriction goes into effect July 1, 2020. Citizens in Hawaii
should work hard to reverse this through the legislature in 2020 in
advance of this rule going into effect.
The debate surrounding a draft of a proposed rule in Colorado to
mandate that parents use state forms to file vaccine exemptions is
ongoing. The information on voicing opposition, once and if the rule is
formally proposed, will be posted on the Colorado page on the NVICAP. Bills pending to restrict vaccine exemptions that deserve continued strong opposition include:
Massachusetts HD 4470 and SD 2548 to restrict medical and religious exemptions by requiring state scrutiny and approval
New Jersey S 2173 to significantly restrict the religious belief exemption
Pennsylvania HB 1771 to require annual medical consultations to use a religious and philosophical exemption
Pennsylvania SB 626 to require certification of religious exemptions by vaccine administrators
These bills need to continue to be opposed. Vaccine choice advocates
came out by the thousands in record numbers in many states and
successfully held back multiple other attacks to remove or restrict
vaccine exemptions in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois,
Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas,
Vermont and Washington.
It is critical that vaccine choice advocates in every state register for and check in to the NVIC Advocacy Portal.
The most important thing you can do if you care about this issue is to
establish relationships with and educate your legislators now and into
next year so you can be ready to counter bills that will restrict or
eliminate exemptions and get good bills filed to protect and expand
vaccine exemptions.
There are a lot of possible activities that you could participate in
and it is easy to get distracted with rallies and social media, but
there is nothing more important that you can do to protect or expand
your right to delay or decline vaccines without penalty or harassment
than talking to your legislators in person and establishing a positive,
respectful relationship with them.
Exemption Disclosure and School Shaming
One way that vaccine industry lobbyists place disruptive pressure on
schools allowing students to enroll with vaccine exemptions is to lobby
to pass legislation that requires individual schools to publish
vaccination and vaccine exemption rates and publicly post that
information online.
These bills are promoted under the guise of educating parents, but
they are really about government-sponsored shaming that pits school
against school and parent against parent for the purpose of
marginalizing and increasing peer pressure on families whose children
have vaccine exemptions. Media will use these reports
in a biased manner to reflect negatively on schools with more
exemptions in an attempt to solicit support for further restricting or
eliminating vaccine exemptions.
Some of these media companies, like the Texas Tribune, are funded heavily by organizations that support mass vaccination like the $1.7 million dollars the Tribune received from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Other publications utilize paid content otherwise known as "native advertising" to take in money from businesses willing to pay for "articles" discrediting families delaying or declining vaccines.
Fortunately, of the 13 bills filed in this category in seven states,
none has passed and the following nine bills died: Arizona HB 1786, HB
2353, and SB 1201; Oklahoma SB 925; and Texas HB 1966, HB 3551, HB 3883,
SB 329 and SB 873. Bills in Massachusetts (HD 4470 and SD 2548),
Michigan (HB 4610) and Pennsylvania (HB 1767) are still pending and
deserve strong opposition.
Children Vaccinating Themselves?
A very troubling area of proposed legislative changes are bills that
allow minor children to be vaccinated without the knowledge or informed
consent of their parents. A child is less likely than an adult parent to
understand their personal and family medical history, including a
history of vaccine reactions, allergies and autoimmune or neurological
disorders.
Minor children do not have the same kind of critical thinking skills
or emotional maturity required to make a vaccine benefit-risk decision
compared to an adult. In addition, if a child receives a vaccination
without a parent's knowledge or informed consent and then experiences a
vaccine reaction, a parent might not recognize the potential cause of
their child's sudden decline in health.
This lack of knowledge by parents could be life threatening for the
child. Fortunately, none of the 13 bills introduced in seven states that
would allow minor children to consent to some or all vaccines without
their parents' knowledge or approval has passed to date.
Connecticut SB 858 would have allowed minors to consent to HPV
vaccines, and New York A 973 and S 3899A were confined to allowing
minors to consent to sexually transmitted disease vaccines, but Georgia
HB 615; Missouri HB 1075; New York A 6465B and S4244; Vermont H 515;
pending District of Columbia B23-0171; pending Massachusetts HD 4470 and
SD 2548; and pending New Jersey A 5399 and S 3835 would let minors of
various ages consent to being vaccinated without parental knowledge or
consent. See NVIC's Submitted Testimony Against D.C. B23-0171.
Expanding Vaccine Exemptions and Informed Consent
Hard-working vaccine and health freedom advocates and open-minded
legislators came together to introduce 58 bills in the following 24
states to expand vaccine exemptions and protect informed consent rights:
Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa,
Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New
Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Texas, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.
Oklahoma passed an important bill, HB 2339, that requires prior
written consent before a child can receive a vaccine at school. With
more schools hosting clinics, there is an increasing risk for children
to be vaccinated at school with vaccines the children didn't need or
that the parent didn't want.
Legislators are increasingly recognizing problems created by forced
vaccination policies where parents are not provided enough information
about potential vaccine risks and contraindications and, in response, 23
bills were filed in 16 states tackling the issue of improving vaccine
informed consent.
Arizona, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri,
Mississippi, Oregon, Texas and Vermont all had bills filed to require
additional information to be provided prior to vaccination. Missouri,
Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas had bills that
either prohibited some form of discrimination or insurance kickbacks
over vaccination status.
Pennsylvania HB 286, which is still pending, would prohibit insurance
companies from denying a health care practitioner participation in an
insurance plan or decreasing reimbursements based on vaccination rates
or the practitioner's decision not to vaccinate.
Pennsylvania (HB 48) and Ohio (HB 132) have bills currently pending
that would require schools to inform parents of their right to file
vaccine exemptions. While none of the other bills passed, the increased
attention by legislators indicates they are hearing the voices and
concerns of their constituents.
There were 17 bills in 10 states that expanded vaccine exemptions. Of
those, Hawaii, Iowa, Mississippi, Rhode Island and West Virginia all
had bills to add conscientious or philosophical belief exemptions, while
Arizona, Mississippi and West Virginia had bills filed that tried to
add religious exemptions.
Recognizing the unnecessary and preventable risks of overvaccination,
legislators in Arizona, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington filed
six bills to allow and expand the application of serologic proof of
immunity.
Oklahoma, Oregon and Pennsylvania continue to break important ground
taking a stand for parental rights. Oklahoma SB 861 was filed to clarify
that refusing to vaccinate or delaying vaccination is not child abuse.
In Oregon, both HB 2779 and SB 653 would have required parental consent
before children taken into protective custody can be vaccinated.
While these bills did not pass, reining in state child protective
services officials, who attempt to criminalize voluntary vaccine
decision-making and override parental rights, is another area that state
legislators can make a difference with proactive legislation.
Deserving strong support, Pennsylvania HB 286 is still pending and it
prohibits child protective services from initiating an investigation on
a parent or guardian for the sole reason of delaying or declining a
vaccine.
Threats and outright denial of healthcare by physicians based on a
patient's vaccination status are a growing problem in America and a
number of state legislators are justifiably concerned about it and have
become more open to considering bills to prohibit such abusive
practices.
Two bills in Texas, HB 3857 and SB 2351, and Montana HB 711 would
have protected patients from discrimination by health care providers
over vaccination status, but did not pass. Pennsylvania families can
still support pending HB 286 prohibiting discrimination by health care
practitioners and health care facilitates against patients, or parents
and guardians of patients, based solely on choosing to delay or decline a
vaccination.
NVIC encourages families to educate their legislators about
harassment and discriminatory practices by physicians, including denial
of medical care, and to also share personal experiences related to
threats and sanctions by physicians — or anyone else — for exercising
vaccine informed consent rights by posting on NVIC's Cry For Vaccine Freedom Wall.
Vaccine Mandates (47 Bills)
Expanding Vaccine Mandates — In 2019, 17 of the 24
bills that proposed to add new vaccine mandates died. New Jersey and
Massachusetts have seven pending vaccine mandate bills for adult health
care workers and childhood HPV and meningococcal vaccines, which still
need to be opposed.
So far in 2019, the only way that vaccine mandates have expanded has
been through the rule making process initiated by state agencies. Hawaii
Gov. David Ige signed a rule into effect to mandate ACIP-recommended
vaccines, which includes HPV, meningitis and flu vaccines, and Kansas
enacted a rule to mandate Hepatitis A and meningococcal vaccines for
school attendance.
NVIC supported a resolution in Idaho, HCR 4, to reject a recently
adopted rule which mandates a second dose of a meningococcal vaccine for
12th-grade students. This resolution failed in the legislature, but
NVIC has a current alert on the NVIC Advocacy Portal for people in Idaho
to participate in the rule review process to hopefully get this mandate
removed.
Please follow alerts on the NVICAP
to articulate concerns to legislators about these attempted expansions
of the vaccine schedule by unelected unaccountable government agency
employees through rule making. Other rules to expand vaccine mandates
are pending in Wisconsin and Wyoming.
In six states, there were bills filed trying to mandate use of the
HPV vaccine: Connecticut (HB 7199), Florida (HB 245 and SB 356),
Illinois (SB 1659), Massachusetts (pending S 1264), New Jersey (pending A
1847) and New York (S 298A).
Because the Hawaii governor approved a rule requiring all children to
receive ACIP-recommended vaccines to attend school, HPV vaccine will be
mandated in Hawaii unless families can get the legislature in 2020 to
repeal this rule.
There were four bills filed in two states to mandate meningococcal
vaccines. In New Jersey, bills A 1991 and S 941 to mandate meningococcal
vaccines for attendance at four-year colleges are still pending.
In Texas, there were two useless bills to mandate meningococcal
vaccines (HB 4068 and SB 1292) that died. Texas already requires
meningococcal vaccines for seventh grade and college and legislators and
families left the hearing scratching their heads over this bizarre
request. Failed HB 1312 out of Colorado attempted to mandate
meningococcal vaccines, as well as vaccines for hepatitis A and
rotavirus.
A vaccine mandate for first responders in Texas (SB 830) was
fortunately killed. NVIC opposes all adult mandates as a condition for
employment. Vaccines are already available to those who want them.
A very odd and unreasonable bill in Texas (HB 3390) would have
required temporary caregivers to have all of their pets vaccinated.
While the bill did ultimately pass, the bill sponsor fortunately
responded to citizen requests and removed the erroneous pet vaccine
requirement from the bill. Restricting Vaccine Mandates — NVIC supported 18
bills in 13 states that would have restricted vaccine mandates.
Unfortunately, none of these passed. Seven bills were filed in Maine,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon to protect employees
who want to refuse vaccination requirements.
Hawaii SB 925 and SB 926 and Oklahoma HB 1112 would have prohibited
new vaccine mandates to be issued by agency rule making. While these
bills failed to pass, passage of a similar bill in Hawaii next session
could help undo the damage of the new mandates and exemption restriction
that was passed by Hawaii Rule HAR 11-157.
Michigan (HB 4711) and Montana (HB 574) set their sights on
prohibiting a requirement that foster care families vaccinate their
families. While the Montana bill died, the Michigan bill is still
pending and support could help tip this good bill over the edge to pass.
Connecticut, Idaho, Montana, Texas and Washington had bills filed to
reject vaccine mandates for certain diseases or ingredients. Legislators
are increasingly hearing concerns over the exploding vaccine schedule
and controversial ingredients. Hopefully, next session there will be
more progress on bills restricting or eliminating vaccine mandates. Vaccine Tracking and Reporting (27 Bills) — Forced
inclusion, forced reporting and OPT-OUT electronic vaccine tracking
registries and enforcement systems continue to threaten the medical
privacy of citizens and their legal right to delay or decline one or
more federally recommended vaccines without being subjected to
harassment or punishment.
The 2019 legislative session included 27 bills in this category that NVICAP
posted and tracked, and nine of these bad bills passed. Louisiana (SB
169) and Rhode Island (H 5541A and S 676A) both passed bills to require
the tracking of adult vaccination status.
The new law in Louisiana, already in effect as of June 11, 2019, is
bad because it removes the existing requirement for consent before
vaccine records can be shared, and it eliminates the current practice of
purging of registry records after age 21.
It is a forced inclusion vaccine tracking system. Louisiana's vaccine
tracking system is now cradle to grave for everyone who lives there.
You cannot opt-out of being tracked by the Louisiana health department;
you can only opt-out of data sharing by the department — but the
department will know everyone's vaccination status under this law.
In a bright spot, forced adult vaccine tracking was defeated in New
York (A 6847 and S 4994) thanks to many families in New York following
NVIC's action alert to contact committee members and their own
legislators to stop A 6487 in the Assembly Health Committee.
Indiana passed controversial SB 228, which allows the state
department to release information in the immunization data registry to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indiana's Immunization
Registry Data Exclusion Request Form can be found here.
Florida passed HB 213, which took an already expansive and intrusive electronic vaccine tracking system, Florida Shots,
and made it even worse. Health care practitioners are now required to
"report" to the vaccine tracking registry, which allows their
performance of vaccinating everyone to be monitored by the health
department.
It is important to take note of the fact that the new law permits
confidential electronic health records held by your doctor about you to
be data mined by the health department without your knowledge or
consent, as HB 213 gave the green light for "the upload of data from
existing automated systems."
Legislators were misled by bill supporters with the false notion that
families can "opt-out" of tracking and, yet, the law still requires the
sham of the state opt-out forms to be submitted to the health
department. In other words, those who don't want to be tracked by the
state have to send forms to the state requesting to opt-out, but still
will be tracked by the health department as a registry refuser.
HB 213 brought adults participating in higher education into the
vaccine tracking system too. Also, the practice of Florida Shots
providing every child born in the state with a registry file continues.
NVIC is advocating for legislators to come back next session and change
the registry to a true opt-in system.
NVIC is urging the Florida legislature to fix this by prohibiting
health care providers from releasing vaccination records and related
personal information to the health department unless the patient or
parent or guardian has willingly given opt-in written informed consent
for the release of their records from their provider and agrees to
inclusion in the tracking system.
Strong opposition to mandatory inclusion and assumed consent opt-out
vaccine tracking systems is needed. Reaching a 100% vaccine compliance
rate by all children and adults is the goal of these electronic tracking
systems.
The Florida registry is already being used as an enforcement tool to
target families not fully vaccinating with calls, letters and even home
visits as evidenced by the Community Guide:
"Using the Florida Shots Registry, which tracks each resident's
vaccinations, clinic staff identified infants and toddlers who were due
for, or had missed, vaccinations… For children behind on their
immunization series, clinic staff reached out to parents through phone
calls, letters, and home visits encouraging them to schedule 'catch-up'
vaccinations."
"Our data exchange technology allows HMOs to instantly match
their records to those already entered in the Florida SHOTS. In turn,
any data not already entered in Florida SHOTS will be uploaded and any
data not already in the hands of the HMO will be forwarded on …
Data exchange offers a quick, easy way for health maintenance
organizations (HMOs) to determine immunization coverage levels within
participating provider practices."
Citizens in every state need to learn from what has happened in
Florida and stop it from happening in their state. Google/YouTube is
being fined $170 million for violating federal privacy laws and
collecting data on children without parental consent, and it is time for
state legislators to repeal assumed consent opt-out and forced
inclusion, intrusive electronic vaccine tracking systems that are also
collecting and storing data on minor children without parental consent.
Maryland passed a bill (HB 316) to require health care providers to
report the vaccination status of patients to the state's vaccine
tracking registry. Oregon's dentists, who were recently authorized to
give vaccines through the passage of HB 2220, must also report to the
state's registry.
In Texas, first responders and EMS applicants have been drafted into
the vaccine tracking system through the passage of HB 1256 and HB 1418.
While Texas' registry is an opt-in system by law, these industries need
to be watched to make sure they don't start to discriminate against
potential and current employees based on vaccination status information
contained in the registry.
Fortunately, legislators in both Texas (SB 1427) and Montana (HB 596)
killed bills that would eliminate the current legal requirement to
obtain opt-in consent to vaccine tracking. In addition, two bills died
in Alabama (HB 522 and SB 256), which had tried to mandate that all
vaccine providers put all vaccines given to everyone, past and present,
into their vaccine tracking system.
NVIC recently submitted comments to Wyoming to oppose a proposed rule
that would remove a section entitled "Patient Consent" for the Wyoming
Immunization Information System, which prevents the health department
from retaining individually identifiable information in the state
vaccine tracking system for someone who has opted-out using a Use and
Disclosure Restriction (F-12) form.
The health department is using the rule making process to try to
change the vaccine registry so that the department will retain a
registry file on everyone — even if they deny consent for the registry —
but immunization information still will be maintained in an "aggregate
format."
Legislators should not be fooled by government agency bureaucrats
hiding behind the guise of security and privacy from deidentified data,
as computer
scientists have developed an algorithm that can pick out almost any
American in databases supposedly stripped of personal information.
Scientists at Imperial College London and Université Catholique de
Louvain in Belgium reported in the journal Nature Communications that
they had devised a computer algorithm that can identify 99.98% of Americans from almost any
available data set with as few as 15 attributes, such as gender, ZIP
code or marital status. The potential for abuse from these electronic
vaccine tracking systems for intended and unintended use of the data
they contain is real.
Wyoming should not be storing information on anyone who does not want
to be in the registry. NVIC requested a public hearing be held and, at
the time of this writing, the deadline for the health department's reply
has passed and they have not responded as required. Please watch the
alert on the NVIC Advocacy Portal for updates.
Colorado, New York, Iowa, Montana and Texas had failed bills that
NVIC opposed which had attempted to expand vaccine tracking, remove
required consent and force reporting to the electronic vaccine tracking
registries.
Vaccines (27 Bills)
Authorizing More Professions to Administer More Vaccines —
More states continue to authorize more pharmacists to expand services
to include the administration of vaccines to younger children. In 2019,
both Arkansas (HB 1278) and Montana (HB 231) passed bills to allow
pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as 7 and older.
Texas fortunately killed a bill (SB 1813) that would have allowed
pharmacists to administer vaccines to children 7 years and older without
a required doctor-patient relationship. Watch testimony against HB 3458
by NVIC director of advocacy Dawn Richardson at 1:20:35. This was one
instance this past session where doctors and NVIC both opposed the same
bill, but for very different reasons.
2019 also revealed a push to expand vaccine administrators to other
professions outside of pharmacists. Oregon passed a bill (HB 2220) to
allow dentists to administer vaccines.
Ohio's pending bill (SB 178) would allow podiatrists to administer
flu vaccines to anyone 7 years old and older, and there are still
opportunities to oppose SB 178. Wyoming had a failed bill, SF 55, that
would have allowed the state health officer to authorize optometrists to
administer vaccines. Everybody wants a piece of the almost $18 billion dollar U.S. vaccine market in 2020.
Pennsylvania has pending bills (HB 91 and SB 274) still deserving
opposition which are attempting to clear the way for pharmacists to
vaccinate children as young as 9 years old. The most concerning bills
still pending are in Wisconsin (AB 137 and SB 110), which would allow
pharmacists to administer vaccines to children under 6 years old. Requiring Vaccine Promotion/Marketing — While the
most active category in expansion of vaccine-related state legislation
in 2018 was bills proposing to legally require the marketing and
promotion of specific vaccines, this area in 2019 has significantly
decreased.
Unlike legal requirements to be vaccinated, these mandates require
either public or private businesses to advertise or promote vaccine use.
These vaccine promotion messages tend to adopt a one-size-fits-all
approach and rarely do vaccine marketing materials contain information
about vaccine risks or how to prevent vaccine injuries.
Iowa broke new ground by passing a bill (HSB 86) to establish tax
breaks by creating a bioscience development corporation as nonprofit for
tax purposes to funnel money into the development of several areas
including vaccines and immunotherapeutics.
Oregon, as of July 15, 2019, now requires (SB 488B) correctional
facilities to offer flu vaccines to each inmate and prisoner. Other
bills, which proposed to mandate vaccine promotion and marketing by an
entity other than the drug company itself, failed, as they should have,
in Connecticut, Indiana and Texas.
New Jersey still has pending bills to require health care facilities
to implement flu vaccination programs for employees (A 1576), and to
push a public awareness campaign to promote vaccines (A 5402 and S
4008). Please continue to ask legislators in New Jersey to oppose these
bills. Comparing Recent Sessions to 2019 —
Two-hundred-twenty-one bills and five sets of rules filed in state
legislatures in 2019 represent the most proposed vaccine-related
measures NVIC has recorded in the history of the NVIC Advocacy Portal.
The number of states proposing bills that affected NVIC's mission has
increased since last year, from 36 states to 40 states and the District
of Columbia.
It is important to note that some of the increases in numbers of
vaccine-related bills filed can be attributed to the fact that the
legislatures in four states — Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas —
meet biannually to consider new bills and do not hold a legislative
session in even years.
In 2019, 39 of the 221 bills filed were in Montana (9), Nevada (1)
and Texas (29). Regardless, this is still the most active year ever.
NVIC correctly predicted in NVIC's 2018 Annual Report on U.S. State Vaccine Legislation that we would see more vaccine-related bills introduced in 2019 than we have ever seen since the NVICAP was launched in 2010.
While there were more bills filed that NVIC opposed (137) than in any
other legislative session, there were also more bills filed that NVIC
supported than in any other session (77).
There were many more positive bills filed in 2019 than any other year
to expand vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights, to restrict
addition of new vaccine mandates, to disallow adding vaccine mandates by
health department rule making, to require doctors and other vaccine
providers to report vaccine reactions, and to prohibit abuse claims,
custody restrictions or discrimination for vaccine refusal.
Enlightened legislators not only are listening to concerned
constituents in greater numbers, but many more are continuing to largely
resist aggressive lobbying efforts by the vaccine industry, medical
trade and other groups whose positions and profits benefit from laws
that force children and adults to use every vaccine sold by
pharmaceutical companies and recommended by public health officials.
Only 18 bad vaccine bills passed out of the 137 that NVIC opposed in
the 2019 legislative session. While the bills to remove or restrict
vaccine exemptions got the bulk of the sensationalized press, only three
of the 22 bills across 17 states to eliminate vaccine exemptions
passed, and two of the 18 bills attempting to restrict exemptions
passed.
Individual citizen involvement in the legislative process, through
personal communications and education of legislators, continues year
after year to make a significant impact on the outcomes of
vaccine-related bills in state legislatures. NVIC predicts that the
increased attack on exemptions and informed consent rights this year
will drive even more U.S. citizens to get more involved in the
legislative process at every level in the years to come.
What Can You Do?
NVIC expects that the vaccine industry will step up lobbying efforts
to restrict or remove vaccine exemptions in 2020 since so many of their
bills failed. Please become a registered user of the NVIC Advocacy Portal
and check in often to learn about ways to personally educate your
legislators when vaccine bills that affect your rights are moving in
your state.
Please encourage your family and all of your friends to do the same.
Clearly, your efforts are making a much more significant difference than
the media and those pushing "no exceptions" forced vaccination policies
and laws are willing to admit, and your active participation is vital
to protecting informed consent rights and vaccine choices in America.
If you see inaccurate information in the media, please take the time
to respond by making a constructive comment online. You can also email
the journalist or call the media outlet and provide accurate,
well-referenced diseases and vaccines information and accurate state vaccine law information, which you can find on our website NVIC.org.
NVIC's illustrated and fully referenced A Guide to Reforming Vaccine Policy & Law" is another good vaccine education tool for legislators and friends and family, too.
Yes, the challenges are great, but so are the opportunities to
educate and empower legislators and residents of every state to defend
vaccine freedom of choice. NVIC is committed to continuing to make that
happen and we look forward to working with you through the NVIC Advocacy Portal to help you protect vaccine informed consent rights in your state in 2020 and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment