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NYSCA Lobbying Center

Scope Modernization Bill - A4706 (Clark) | S5860 (Goundares)
The Title VIII Coalition Partnership Bill - A2588 (Peoples-Stokes) | S3350 (Scarcella-Spanton)
Retrospective Audit Look Back Bill - A3365 (Lavine) | S5209 (Scarcella-Spanton)
Credit Card Bill - A3986 (Bores) | S2105 (Cooney)

2025 Legislative End of Session Update

As you are aware, this year’s legislative session has been quite the ride! As you may recall, the budget which was due on April 1, was not approved until early May. At the same time, your NYSCA officers and legislative committee attended a leadership lobby day where we met with Assembly and Senate sponsors of our priority bills, as well as chair of the Assembly and Senate Higher Education Committees. Overall, this was a very positive and productive day, with much support noted for the various bills, including and especially our scope of practice bill.

This productive day was reflected in the significant movement we saw on several of legislative priorities. Most significantly, we are very excited that our scope bill passed the Senate, following some language modifications recommended by the New York State Education Department (SED). The bill passed the Senate in the closing days of their legislative session.

On the Assembly side, our Assembly sponsor, Assemblymember Sarah Clark, and our lobbyist, Amy Kellogg, worked diligently to get the bill moving through the Assembly. The Chair of the Higher Education Committee, Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman was also supportive of moving the bill. However, we did not see movement in the Assembly before the end of their legislative session because of a few issues that we will address before the start of the next session.

Although this is not the outcome we were hoping for, this was a very positive session with so much movement and support for the first year in a new session, and we are feeling very optimistic for the next session and getting the bill passed in both houses. The movement and support we witnessed would not have been possible without the efforts of our lobbyist, Amy Kellogg and her wisdom in asking Assemblywoman Clark and Senator Gounardes to sponsor our legislation and all of their hard work in promoting the bill.

In addition, we were able to gain letters of support from the Athletic Trainers and a letter of neutrality from the Physical Therapist, due to our coalition work with these groups. All these steps set us up well for moving and passing (fingers crossed) this bill in the next legislative session which begins in January.

As you are also aware, the Senate and Assembly passed our coalition virtual credit card bill which requires that any insurer that uses a credit card, virtual credit card, or electronic funds to pay a provider's claim for reimbursement to notify the provider in advance if there is a fee to process the payment and provide an alternative payment method that does not impose a fee. An opt-in for processing payment with a fee would be required. This bill will make its way to the governor’s office to be signed into law, at some point following the close of session.

In addition, we had good discussion our legislation to limit the look back audit period that insurers have to recoup money that has already been paid. The insurance companies were strongly opposed to shortening the timeframe, so we are reviewing the issue and exploring ways to shorten the timeframe but also address the bigger issue related to coverage confusion. We will work in the next few months to propose changes to the bill and continue to build our coalition of supporters.

Overall, we will build on this extremely productive legislative session and look to bring home a win on scope and look back. We will keep members posted on any outreach that you can participate in that would be helpful.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to any member of the Legislative Committee or NYSCA leadership.