By John Lyon and Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A bill requiring water systems in Arkansas serving 5,000 or more people to add fluoride to public drinking water and one requiring private health insurance companies to cover the diagnosis, testing and treatment of autism are headed to the governor.
By a 56-35 vote, the House today gave final passage to Senate Bill 359 by Sen. David Johnson, D-Little Rock.
The autism insurance legislation, House Bill 1315 by Rep. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, passed 34-0.
Gov. Mike Beebe is expected to sign both bills into law.
Also Wednesday, the Senate approved SB 345, which would create a prescription drug monitoring program, and SB 437, which would tighten restrictions for over-the-counter sale of cold medications containing ephedrine, a key ingredient in the making of methamphetamine.
Meanwhile, the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee endorsed SB 221 by Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Beebe, which would mandate the creation and updating of an online database of state spending.
The fluoride that passed the House bill would affect 32 communities that currently do not fluoridate drinking water. Rep. Linda Tyler, D-Conway, who presented the bill on the House floor, said fluoride builds up enamel and prevents 60 percent of tooth decay in children and 35 percent in adults.
Delta Dental has pledged to pay start-up expenses for the affected communities, so the cost of the measure is not an issue, Tyler said. Reducing dental problems will save the state and the public money, she said.
“We’ve talked a lot in this session about saving money. This gives us an opportunity to do just that,” she said.
Some opponents argued that communities should be able to control their water supplies, and others argued that fluoride may be harmful to infants.
Tyler said she believed the Legislature was charged with protecting the public health. She said that according to the state Department of Health, fluoride is not bad for babies.
Rep. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, said Fort Smith supplies water to several towns in Oklahoma.
“It would seem like to me that would open us up to a lawsuit if we were putting something that they thought might be poison in their water,” he said.
Rep. Billy Gaskill, D-Paragould, dismissed arguments about the supposed dangers of fluoride, saying, “This stuff has been here 50 years. This is all a lot of baloney.”
Rep. Loy Mauch, R-Bismarck, who opposed the bill, read passages from the U.S. and state constitutions regarding liberty.
“The more government you get, the less liberty you have,” he said.
Rep. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, urged House members to vote for the bill. He said he had received so many phone calls Tuesday from opponents of the bill that his phone battery died, but he believed passing it was “the right thing to do for Arkansans.”
In the Senate, Sen. Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock, whose grandson was diagnosed with autism when he was 4-years-old, presented HB 1315 on the floor.
“This is a very important bill,” Salmon said, adding that her grandson received the necessary therapy and is about to graduate from high school and attend college.
The bill limits coverage to children under 18 and caps annual payments at $50,000.
Lindsey said earlier in the week that coverage would raise insurance premiums by less than $30 per year for a family of four.
The House also voted 87-2 to approve HB 1428 by Rep. Donna Hutchinson, R-Bella Vista, which would require health insurance companies to offer child-only policies.
Hutchinson said that because the federal health care overhaul prohibits insurance companies from excluding children with pre-existing conditions, companies do not want to offer child-only policies. She said her bill would put uninsured children under age 19 on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program until October, and then insurance companies would be required to offer child-only policies for one month every October until the state insurance exchange is created in 2014.
Tyler said the problem the bill would address was created not only by the federal health care overhaul but also by one insurance company that has chosen to leave the state “and leave a number of people high and dry.”
The bill goes to the Senate.
Both drug bills that passed the Senate were sponsored by Sen. Percy Malone, D-Arkadelphia. SB 345 passed 25-4 and SB 437 passed 28-0.
Malone said SB 345 would create a registry of purchases of prescription drugs such as the painkiller OxyContin and certain other drugs designated as controlled substances.
SB 437 would allow only a pharmacist to distribute ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenylpropanolamine, major ingredients of meth.
The Senate also approved SB 423 by Malone, which would classify substances sold as “bath salts” but used to get high as controlled substances.
The bill, Malone said, seeks to stop the sale of substances containing chemicals such as mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV.
Malone said people have been ingesting, injecting and snorting the substances to get high, and some have become suicidal as a side effect.
The bill passed 35-0 and goes to the House.
Dismang said the online state checkbook his bill would create is estimated to cost $600,000 for implementation and $225,000 annually for operation, mostly for the salaries of two new employees. State finance officials do not oppose the measure, which was proposed by Lt. Gov. Mark Darr.
The bill goes to the House.
The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed HB 1061 by Rep. David Sanders, R-Little Rock, which would make it a felony for sports agents or their intermediaries to entice athletes by providing them with material benefits. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel testified in support of the bill, which goes to the Senate.
