What Happened to the California Medical Board’s Concerns About SB 276 and Restricting Doctors Who Write Exemptions for Vaccines? Who Changed Their Minds?
During their quarterly meeting on August 8, 2019, The California Medical Board (CMB) surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, voted to support SB276, Senator Richard Pan’s medical exemption bill that places narrow restrictions on doctors’ abilities to write vaccine exemptions for school aged children. SB276 is not about vaccines, it is a bill regarding the exemption process required to fulfill California’s school vaccine mandate. The bill, in an unprecedented way, hands over the jurisdiction of reviewing and revoking the medical opinions of physicians from the CMB to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and California Department of Health and Human Services (CHHS). In May, when the Board previously voted to “Support SB276 in Concept” - the concept being that physicians writing fraudulent medical exemptions should be investigated - CMB Members raised a number of concerns on the bill. These concerns were not addressed by the most recent amendments to SB276, nor were they brought up for discussion at yesterday’s board meeting. So it is surprising that the CMB changed their position to Support SB276. What (or who) made them change their positions?