b'HB 2771 (Lily/Aquino), the Hospital Assessment, Passed Both Houses, 55-0-0 & 111-0-02025 Illinois Chamber Healthcare PrioritiesHB 35 (Morgan/Fine) which was identical to SB 1425 (Fine) as introduced and remained substantially similar, as Passed the House, would have required oversight when using artificial intelligence or predictive models to make adverse consumer outcomes in health insurance coverage. The Illinois Chamber opposed this legis-lation and essentially any legislation that sought to hinder the use of AI and similar computing technologies before there is an opportunity to understand these technologies applications in improving businesses. The bill passed the House 79-35-0 but never received a vote in the Senate. The bill currently remains in the Senate Executive Committee. HB 1141 (Hauter/Turner, D) prohibits the need for a medically necessary determination and time limit for gen-eral anesthesia use during medical operations. Initially the Illinois Chamber was opposed to the bill as intro-duced, however, the insurance industry worked with the House sponsor and moved industry and business to neutral. Passed Both Houses.HB 1272 (West) is another rerun from the 103rd GA and would create the Wholesale Prescription Drug Import Act which would permit importation of prescription drugs from Canada into Illinois directly. As in the past, the Illinois Chamber opposed. The bill has been re-referred to the Rules Committee.HB 1332 (Meyers-Martin/Hunter) as passed the House, Creates the Emergency Contact and Caregiver Advise, Record, and Enable Act and provides that a patient or patients legal representative the opportunity to des-ignate a caregiver for the patient. The Chamber opposed the introduced legislation but was moved to neutral with the adoption of HFA3. The bill has Passed Both Houses but has yet to be sent to the Governor for signature.HB 1431 (West/Stadelman) as passed the House, amends the Fair Patient Billing Act to require hospitals that charge a facility fee for outpatient services that are distinct from a professional fee to adopt a policy to inform patients as reasonably practicable. The Illinois Chamber shared their concerns with the bill as introduced with Rep. West prior to the bill being heard in House Human Services Committee. Rep. West worked with the stake-holders on HCA1. The Illinois Chamber moved to neutral with the adoption of HCA1 and remained so with the technical change in SFA1. The bill has Passed Both Houses.HB 1443 (Syed) & SB 66 (Peters) would create the Health Care Availability and Access Board Act, or in other words, a state-run prescription drug advisory board. The two pieces of legislation are identical to previously introduced proposals in past GAs. As momentum gained around state intervention on the cost of healthcare, it was unclear whether PDAB would have legs this year. The Illinois Chamber will always be opposed to any form of PDAB. HB 1443 was re-referred to Rules Committee and SB 66 remains in Assignments.HB 1598 (Hernandez, B/Castro) sought to increase barriers of entry for surgical technicians working in Illinois hospitals and health facilities by limiting eligible accrediting bodies. The Chamber engaged the House spon-sor and proponents of the bill to express our unwavering opposition to any form of the legislation that would not permit hospital-run programs for surgical tech training and accreditation to continue. The bill passed on partisan lines in the House but failed to move out of Senate Licensed Activities where it remains at the time of this report. HB 1706 (Morris) & SB 102 (Feigenholtz) would ratify and allow for Illinois participation in the Nurse Licensure Compact. The nurse licensure compact is a multi-state license that 43 other states and licensing jurisdictions, including all of Illinois neighboring states, participate in. The Illinois Chamber supports this effort; unfortu-nately, neither bill was able to advance and has since been re-referred to Rules and Assignments.HB 3494 (Willams) and SB 2273 (Villanueva) both sought to create the Health Data Privacy Act. To find out more about these pieces of legislation and the Illinois Chambers leadership on the efforts, please refer to the Tech Section. 13|END OF SESSION REPORT'