The Senate is reviving a bill that would remove the power of the state health secretary to take steps toward preventing the spread of contagious diseases, a proposal that Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration says puts public health at risk.
Heading up the effort was Republican state Sen. Mark Steffen of Hutchinson, a staunch advocate of “health freedom” who also is advocating for a related bill that would prevent employers and schools from enforcing any kind of vaccination requirement.
“This bill stops no bureaucrat from doing anything they can’t already do now except force their will on individuals who did not elect them,” Steffen told the Senate health committee on Thursday morning.
“Masks, lockdowns, closures, ginned up inaccurate tests, no early treatments, a gene-altering medical procedure termed a vaccine. That’s the legacy of public health today,” Steffen told the committee.
The bill, he said, “brings humility and sincerity to a problematic, chronically ill government department,” he said.
Steffen made headlines during the pandemic when he revealed during a committee hearing in January 2022 that he was under investigation by the Board of Healing Arts.
He said he had been under investigation for a year and a half as a way of trying to stop him from advocating for using off-label medications to treat COVID-19.
Like it has done in the past, the state Department of Health and Environment renewed its opposition to the bill.
The agency said the legislation would cripple the health department’s ability to fight infectious disease and put public health at risk.
“We ask that the committee not pass this bill as it would undo hundreds of years of public health work that has helped control the spread of infectious and contagious diseases in our state,” said Ashley Goss, state’s deputy secretary for public health.
“Without these public health mitigation measures, the impact of infectious disease outbreaks will increase and have both a human and financial impact on individuals, families, the health care system, and public health,” Goss said.
Among other things, the bill would:
- Remove the authority of the health secretary to adopt rules and regulations including the power to designate reportable infectious diseases in the state.
- Remove the power of the secretary to order someone exposed to or capable of transmitting a contagious disease to seek treatment or be quarantined.
- Remove the ability of the secretary to order remediation of an infectious disease.
- Remove the power of teachers and school administrators from the list of people required to report an infectious disease to the county, a joint board of health or the local health officer. The reporting requirement would be left to dentists, nurses, hospital administrators and physicians.
- Only allow the county or joint board of health or local health officer to recommend against public gatherings when necessary to control an infectious or contagious disease. Those agencies are now empowered to prohibit those gatherings.
- Prevent employers from firing someone for following an isolation and quarantine recommendation from a local health officer. The bill also would provide a civil cause of action for violating this provision.
Goss told the committee in written testimony that removing the health secretary’s power to adopt regulations would mean that health care providers, hospitals and laboratories would no longer be mandated to report cases of an infectious disease to the state.
“The medical and public health community would no longer have accurate insight into whether these diseases are increasing or decreasing in our state,” she said.
“Also, in the case of many new and emerging infectious diseases, the federal government distributes treatments through state public health departments.
“Without mandated reporting of people diagnosed with these diseases, KDHE would not be able to get these treatments to the people who need them.”
Goss said there also were distinct implications to barring the secretary from ordering someone to seek treatment or be quarantined if they had a contagious disease.
“On numerous occasions, public health has provided these written orders to help Kansans avoid losing money when having to cancel flights due to illness, avoid being fired from their jobs for not reporting to work while infectious, and avoid being penalized at their colleges for missing classes,” she said.
“Interventions like isolation and quarantine are cornerstones to controlling the spread of infectious and contagious diseases,” she said.
“Without these measures, or the severe limitation to the use of these measures, the number of cases and close contacts during infectious disease outbreaks will increase, posing a threat to the safety and well-being of Kansans.”
State fiscal analysts projected that the state could incur millions of dollars in expenses because of an increase in infectious or contagious diseases because of how the power of the health secretary would be limited.
The health department estimates that the cost for one measles outbreak would be about $7.1 million alone.
The health department reports that between 2001 and 2018, for 11 outbreaks, the median cost for a measles outbreak in the United States is estimated to be $152,308.
Supporters of the bill cited bad memories they had during the pandemic when the government took steps to rein in the spread of COVID-19, whether it was mask mandates or forced closures – or a vaccine mandate in the case of the federal government.
Mike Perry, a private resident, said he “emphatically” supported the bill.
“It was amazing during COVID,” Perry told lawmakers, “we don’t live in communist China, but it sure felt like it.
“The stuff coming out of our government – the mandates and everything, it was unbelievable,” he said. “My wife and I were in horror watching all of this.
“We must protect the people’s rights,” he said.
“No one should have the power to arbitrarily quarantine or impose penalties on anyone for their personal choices on health matters.”
Gayln Perry, a Johnson County physician, played down the changes proposed in the law.
“We are still being protected against contagion, but all it does is changes words like ‘require,’ ‘must,’ ‘order,’ ‘control,’ ‘enforce,’ ‘executed,’ ’empower’ to ‘recommend’ (and) ‘shall further manage and make policies,'” Perry said.
“The substance of the bill continues to protect Kansas citizens against contagion but it also protects the inalienable rights of our citizens,” she said.
“A bill should be able to support both.”
Last year, the Legislature approved a similar bill curbing the power of state and local health authorities to control the spread of contagious and infectious diseases.
The bill passed 22-18 in the Senate and 63-56 in the House, well short of the two-thirds votes needed to override a veto.
The Legislature did not attempt an override.
