Testimony On: HB 1474 - Office of Health Occupations

House Health and Government Operations Committee of the Maryland General Assembly

Testimony on: HB 1474 - “Office of Health Occupations”

Position: Oppose

Hearing date: March 8, 2017

The Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maryland and Environs opposes HB 1474 that would establish the Office of Health Occupations in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and transfer the Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene’s oversight, duties and responsibilities relating to the health occupation boards to a new Director of the Office of Health Occupations.

The many other provisions of this 34-page bill are too numerous to list here. When reviewed in their entirety, it’s clear the provisions of HB 1474 would essentially take apart the existing health occupation regulatory structure of the state, allow many existing regulations created to protect consumers and the public health to be weakened or eliminated, and create a centralized structure to manage all health occupation regulation. Each executive director or administrator of a health occupation board who now is hired by and serves the needs of his/her board would likely be dismissed as HB 1474 specifies that executive directors and administrators of health occupation boards would serve at the pleasure of the Director of the Office of Health Occupations.

While such a centralized approach as proposed in HB 1474 might seem to be a good way to increase efficiency, consolidating so much regulatory power under one political appointee of the Governor would be dangerous to the health and well-being of the public if the Governor happened to question the value of regulation, and viewed much of it as being anti-business or unnecessary bureaucracy that limits economic opportunities and increases costs.

Whatever autonomy health occupation boards now have to meet their statutory requirements would be severely curtailed under the new structure. This means the ability to continue to attract practitioner and consumer members to serve on health occupation boards would surely be diminished because the autonomy and powers of the boards would be diminished.

FCAME recognizes the current health occupations regulatory structure in our state is not perfect. However, we believe the current decentralized structure has worked sufficiently well under the supervision of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with appropriate oversight of health occupation boards provided by this committee in the House and EHEA in the Senate. Replacing the current regulatory structure with an untested, very centralized approach is unwarranted, with no guarantee it would work better than the current approach. Our belief is that the approach proposed in HB 1471 would be a disaster, both near term as the current structure is taken apart and regulation is effectively frozen while the new structure is created, and long term when regulation of health occupations is centrally controlled and much of it is weakened or eliminated.

In summary, HB 1471 is a solution in search of a problem, is clearly unnecessary, and surely would not be good for consumers and public health. We urge anunfavorable report on HB 1471.

Brian Ditzler, FCAME Vice President,

FCAME is the volunteer-run, regional chapter of the non-profit Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA), the oldest and largest consumer protection organization focused solely on guarding the rights (and wallets) of grieving consumers. FCA and its chapters take no money from the death care industry or government.

Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maryland & Environs (FCAME)
301-564-0006 . email:
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, MD 20814