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SACRAMENTO – Today, members of the California Senate Republican Caucus voted against Senate Bill 276 because it would require the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to review medical exemptions submitted and those issued by physicians who submit a large number of exemptions. SB 276 reduces a parent’s right to decide what is best for their own children and places it in the hands of a government bureaucracy. SB 276 passed on a partisan vote.
Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) issued the following statement:
“If the author of this legislation and Sacramento Democrats truly want to crackdown on fraudulent medical exemptions, then the Legislature should focus on offering resources to the California Medical Board and making sure they do their job.
“This legislation will unfairly target families with medically-fragile children. It will harm children because it ignores the judgment of a family’s personal doctor and replaces it with a government bureaucracy. SB 276 is a dangerous intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship,” said Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove.
Republican Senator Jeff Stone (R-Riverside) who is a pharmacist by profession stated, “While I support immunization, I don’t believe you can have one-size-fits-all medical exemptions. Why aren’t we empowering the State Medical Board to police their own? To me this is an admission that the Medical Board either doesn’t want to enforce these provisions, or they are inept to enforce these provisions.”