May 27, 2026 · Health Committee · 3,917 words · 5 speakers · 43 segments
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I will now call the House Health Committee to order. Would you please take the roll, sir?
Chair Schmidt. Here. Vice Chair Deuter. Here. Ranking Member Simani. Representative Baker. Here. Barhorst. Craig. Here. Brennan. Here. Gross excused. King. Here. Miller. Stewart. White excused.
Thank you. We do not have a quorum, but do we need to have a secretary since Dr. Samani's not here? Would Representative...
What?
Oh, we can't approve you until... Well, if people show up, would you mind taking the helm?
Thank you so much.
All right. All right, we will postpone the minutes and we will postpone an acting secretary, and we will call our first hearing for House Bill 863. Will Representative Matthews please come forward?
Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Chair Dieter, and all the members of the Health Committee. Good morning. And thank you for the opportunity to present sponsor testimony for House Bill 863, a common-sense bill to support Ohio businesses and our health care sector. This bill is a companion to Senate Bill 344, introduced by Senator George Lang, and it starts with a simple observation. Ohio already has the people, the facilities, and the expertise to supply our hospitals with safe, effective, protective equipment, and yet we continue to depend overwhelmingly on foreign manufacturers to fill that need. Today, more than 90% of the healthcare personal protective equipment used in Ohio hospitals is single-use and disposable, and the vast majority of it is made overseas. The disruption around COVID and the government shifts on that showed us exactly what that dependence costs. When global supply chains broke down, hospitals scrambled for gowns and protective gear, and people rightfully questioned the quality of these foreign source goods. Healthcare workers and the people they served were left vulnerable. There is no good reason we should allow that vulnerability to persist when a domestic solution is already in place. The linen uniform and facility services industry in Ohio employs nearly 6,000 workers, generates more than $200 million in annual payroll, and already operates more than 27 certified hygienically clean processing facilities, serving every single zip code in this state. House Bill 863 builds on that existing strength. By encouraging hospitals to reach a reasonable balance of reusable infection prevention textiles, items like isolation gowns, privacy curtains, cheats, and surgical drapes, we create more demand for Ohio-based processing, strengthen the domestic supply chain, lower the strain on our water and electric usage, and put our health care system on a more secure footing. The financial case for hospitals is equally strong. UCLA Health saves an estimated $450,000 a year since switching to reusables. A Virginia clinic saved more than $850,000 over three years. On a straight per-use basis, reusables cost roughly 52 cents compared to $1.52 for disposables, nearly a third of the price. That is money hospitals can redirect toward patient care and their own workforce and save taxpayer dollars if there is any taxpayer funding of these hospitals. So if the savings are that clear, why haven't hospitals already made that switch on their own? The best answer I can find is that disposables are deeply embedded in the hospital procurement system. A reusable gown carries a higher upfront sticker price, around $7 per, compared to $1.50 for a disposable, and hospital purchasing decisions are often made line item by line item without full visibility into the per-use cost over a product's lifetime. The laundering and logistics are also handled by a third-party service provider, so those ongoing costs can look like a new vendor relationship rather than a net savings. Add in the inertia of existing supplier contracts, the administrative effort of a transition, and the time scale for risk and reward for the people that are making these purchasing decisions. They often may not see the savings while they're employed, and making the jump looks more perilous than it is. This legislation gives hospitals the nudge and the framework to do what the data already tells us makes sense. I very much want to be clear what this bill does not do. It carries no penalties for noncompliance. Facilities facing supply disruptions beyond their control are exempt. Transition costs are largely absorbed by the service providers, those that would be helping with the reusables, not the hospitals. And record-keeping requirements, part of this bill, are designed to align with reporting that hospitals already have to provide by other statutes for state and federal agencies. This is a workable, flexible framework, not a new burden on an already strained health care system. Ohio has a chance to strengthen our homegrown industry, reduce dependence on foreign supply chains, lower costs for our hospitals, and better protect our health care workers and the people they serve all at the same time. That's exactly the kind of common sense legislation this committee should be able to get behind and has in the past. Chair Schmidt, members of the committee, thank you again for your time and attention relatively early on this morning. I ask for favorable consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you so much.
Are there any questions? Dr. Samani.
Thank you. Thanks. I love this idea. I think reusables are great. But one of the questions I have, because it's something that we looked at in private practice, is what is the overall, like, one, the cost to the environment, you know, when you think about disposables and just putting them in the ground, you know, into the waste, versus the cost of like the laundry and sterilizing guns and all that. And you may not have the answer. But that's something that I know in practice we looked at when we were looking at reusable instruments versus disposable instruments. So I think that something that I would think would be important when we try to transition to reusable stuff Through the chair to the ranking member great question Thank you so much. I can get you solid numbers. I've talked with some in this industry, and the industrial-scale cleaning does make it incredibly efficient, much more. I believe when we spoke, it was around 30% of the use compared to if you were using cleaning at home to reuse things. but we can get those more specific numbers for a proponent at a second hearing to the committee.
Thank you, Paula. Are there any other questions?
Madam Chair.
Representative Brennan.
Thank you. Thanks for bringing the bill. It is definitely interesting, and I'm by no means a health expert, even though I'm serving on the committee today, but I did reach out to one of my health care administrators in Parma last night and explained the bill to them and had them look at it. And their question to me was, you know, if it's more cost effective, why isn't the market bearing that now?
Right. Thank you. Through the chair to the member, part of it's inertia. In the same way that it's a higher up front cost to move from disposables to reusables. and that is a big pill to swallow where then over a time scale of five years, ten years, fifteen years, then it is much more cost effective. When you are being more evaluated, I know in my job I'm evaluated on a three-month, six-month, one-year time scale rather than five, ten, fifteen-year scale that we are looking at here. So there's that. and the other is when you look at the disposables, you see it as a per-use cost, an upper item cost rather than a per-use cost, and when you add in the type of vendor agreement that you would need for the reusables, that's an extra thing, so that shows up on a line, even if overall it is saving you costs. So we want to create that incentive, and we've seen in other states that have looked at this, that there is that cost savings. It just takes that hump in the same way that it is cheaper to buy paper plates than it is to have nice plates that you then wash, but over time that saves you money.
Quick follow-up? Yes. Thank you. His concern is that if they were to do a 50-50 mix that they might lose the economies of scale when it comes to either side of that equation.
Through the chair to the representative, if that type of number needs to shift to make this more financially feasible, then great. And we do want to make this cost effective for everybody. I do have a few questions, sir. Over a year ago, a vendor came to me with this concept. And one of the things that perked my interest, but I didn't hear you talk about it here, was when you have staff, oncology nurses, floor nurses, wearing their gowns and then going home, cooking dinner, maybe washing them, maybe not washing them for the next day, you're bringing a new influence of infections back to the hospital. And their argument was if you had every staff person in the arena having reusables that had been washed sufficiently to address the possible infections put inside the cloth, It would make it safer for the patient when we know that one of the problems with hospitals is infection. But then there's a cost to it, and so you have to look at cost versus reward. Does your bill address the nurse, the STNA, the whatever that goes back home in that gown and then comes back the next day? Would they be part of this reusable, or would they just be doing their own thing as they are now?
To the chair, that's a great question. And I try to keep my testimony between two and three minutes and hit the most persuasive things, but that is another element of you do want to make sure that the materials, the personal protective equipment is the highest quality and is not being a vector for other types of diseases to the greater community or bringing things from outside into the hospital. And by having a system, many of the places that have systems with the reusables, it is a check-in, check-out of these reusable garments that would stay within the hospital, that are then washed on site or taken with those types of vendors to a location, to a closed loop to make sure that everything is clean, everything is sanitized. And you are right that that could be another benefit of this type of legislation and this type of nudge in that space. Another one tangential to that is we saw during that supply chain disruption and in other times when you're doing cost cutting, even other than the COVID supply chain disruption, that you had extensions of disposables being stretched past their effective use. so that they are supposed to be one use, two use, three uses, and are getting used longer and longer even though they're expected use, and it only goes so far. And by having an incentive to move into this reusables, you have this steady stream of high-quality, reviewed, constantly cleaned type of PPE rather than stretching disposables past what they were intended to use. Any other questions?
Thank you for your testimony.
Thank you Chair.
This is the, includes the first hearing on House Bill A Right now we have a quorum so a couple of things Our Secretary is here Thank you so much And on your iPad are the minutes of the May 20th meeting Are there any corrections or additions? Hearing none, we stand approved as read. All right, now I will call up the next hearing. House Bill 380 for its first hearing. Well, Representative Fisher, please come forward.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you, Chair Schmidt, Vice Chair Dieter, Ranking Member Somani, and members of the Ohio House Health Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on House Bill 380, which would designate the month of June as Migraine and Headache Awareness Month. Many people have the misconception that migraine is nothing more than a bad headache. The reality is this is a chronic neurological disease that affects more than one billion people worldwide. By enacting this bill, we can help bring visibility to what is, for many, including myself, an invisible yet incredibly painful struggle. People who suffer from migraine are subject to frequent attacks that bring thrombic head pain, nausea, dizziness, and extreme sensitivity. This legislation will help recognize the hardships these individuals face and bring awareness to one of the more underdiagnosed yet extremely common medical conditions in the world. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on House Bill 380. Happy to answer any questions you have at this time.
That was very quick. Thank you so much. Are there any questions for this? Representative Brennan.
Thanks, Madam Chair. It's pretty interesting that this bill is on your agenda today. I was a migraine sufferer for about 20 years. For about 20 years, I had a migraine five or six days a week, and I'm not exaggerating. I had a headache more than I did not. A year into this job, I got high blood pressure, despite the fact that I'm a marathon runner like the chair. But this job not only will give you high blood pressure, but give you migraines. but I started taking five milligrams of amlodipine. And about two months into taking amlodipine, not only did my high blood pressure go down, but I haven't had a migraine in about two years. So I did what we all do. I went on Google and looked it up, and there haven't been any significant studies done on it, but there are many individuals like me that have had the same phenomenon where the positive side effect is an elimination of your migraine. So I try to spread the word to as many people as I know that are migraine sufferers to talk to your doctor about the possibility of amlodipine as being a prolific, I don't know what they call it, prophylactic, right, for your, I thought that's what it was, but I wasn't sure, and I didn't want to, you know, for migraines. migraines. And I tried everything under the sky for my migraines. A lot of triptans, which some say that may have actually caused my high blood pressure, ironically. So for anybody out there listening, talk to your doctor about that. Thanks for bringing the bill.
Yeah, through the chair of the member, thank you for that. And also, I do want to mention you stole the joke I had about this job giving us all headaches. So very good job on that, too. Thank you.
Are there any other questions? You got off easy, sir. This concludes the first hearing on House Bill 380. All right. Now we will call up House Bill 820. Will Representative Dieter please come forward?
Good morning, unfortunately mine is not as short as Rep Fisher's, two pager, apologies. Good morning Chair Schmidt, Ranking Member Samani, members of the House Health Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to provide sponsored testimony on House Bill 820. House Bill 820 is a public health and prevention focused measure that addresses radon exposure or exposure to radon gas in Ohio schools and homes through two primary approaches. First, it requires radon testing in school facilities, and second, it creates tax credits to help offset the cost of radon mitigation systems installed in both residential and commercial properties. Radon is an invisible, odorless, radioactive gas that occurs naturally in soil and can accumulate inside buildings. According to the US EPA, radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, second only to smoking. Ohio faces a particularly significant radon challenge. We have the highest lung cancer burden in the country, with recent ODH data showing the state's lung cancer incidence rate is approximately 21% higher than the national average. In addition, Ohio has some of the highest residential radon levels in the nation. One recent report found that nearly 49% of radon tests conducted in Ohio homes measured at or above the EPA action level of four picocuries per liter. Studies comparing counties with high radon levels to counties with moderate radon levels have also found significantly higher lung cancer incidence rates in high radon areas independent of smoking rates. The EPA classifies counties in Ohio into radon zones based on predicted indoor radon concentrations. Zone 1 represents the highest risk, with predicted average indoor radon concentrations of above 4, the EPA action threshold. Ohio has 53 counties classified as a Zone 1. Zone 2 reflects a moderate risk. In Ohio, the remaining 35 counties fall into this category. Zone 3 reflects the lower risk, and Ohio has no counties classified as a Zone 3. Huron County where I live and represent is classified as a Zone 1, meaning it has the highest predicted radon risk. With every county in Ohio classified as either a zone one or a zone two, this is clearly not an isolated issue affecting only a few communities. I also want to share a personal perspective resulting from a school that I attended and the home that we built. We had to mitigate our home after it tested well above the EPA standard shortly after constructing the home at a cost of several thousand dollars The testing itself was covered at the time through the local health department They had a grant but there was no financial incentive available for the mitigation Our motivation was simple. We had several small children in the home, and it was a newly constructed home, which we plan to live in permanently and still live there today, and that was about 20 years ago. As a student, the junior high school I attended had known asbestos exposure in the basement area where we were all required to take swimming throughout the day. Today, I live with a rare inflammatory lung disease. I cannot say whether that exposure contributed to my condition. Maybe it did, maybe it did not, but that uncertainty is exactly the point. We are left wondering how many students or staff may have been affected and in what ways. Those are questions we should not have to ask decades later. And today, unlike 35 years ago, we are aware of a known carcinogen that exists at elevated levels throughout most of Ohio. We should not have to wonder whether our children are being exposed to it while sitting in a classroom. House Bill 820 establishes a framework to ensure that school facilities are tested for radon using nationally recognized standards and licensed professionals, and the bill applies to all schools. Additionally, because much of Ohio falls within the highest radon risk categories, House Bill 820 creates refundable tax credits to help offset the cost of installing radon mitigation systems in homes and commercial buildings that test high. These systems are highly effective, but the cost can be a barrier for families and property owners. This legislation is fundamentally about prevention. We spend enormous resources treating disease after it occurs, yet comparatively little on identifying and reducing preventable environmental exposures before harm happens. House Bill 820 is about awareness, transparency, prevention, and protecting Ohio families and schoolchildren from known carcinogens that would otherwise go undetected. Thank you for the opportunity to provide sponsor testimony, and I am happy to answer questions.
Thank you. Are there any questions? Who goes first over here? Dr. Samani, and then Representative Brennan, and then Representative Baker. Anybody over here? All right. Left side first.
Thank you. Through the chair, thank you so much for bringing this to everybody's attention. My only question is the $14 million that would be appropriated, how would it be distributed? Would you look at areas that have, like, higher radon levels when giving them to schools? Like, what would be the mechanism for that distribution of that money?
Through the chair to Representative Samani, I will get you that information. I do not have that offhand. Apologies.
Representative Brennan?
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for bringing the bill. The representative for my sister in Norwalk. So I also reached out to my superintendent last night regarding your bill. Parma City Schools were cut by about $3 million in the operating budget. And so he's hypersensitive, as we all are in my district, about unfunded mandates, particularly because we can't pass a new money levy to save our lives in my district. So the $14 million, upon my reading of the bill, looks like it's for the radon testing. His concern is if radon is detected, are there any state dollars available for mitigating the radon in any of the buildings in the district?
Good question. Through the chair to Representative Brennan, we do not have an appropriation set aside for mitigation. That would eventually be on the school district.
Follow-up?
Thank you. And that's the concern as well, is if radon is detected, what type of lawsuits does that potentially cause for the district if they don't have the funds available to mitigate the radon?
Completely understand that concern through the chair. I would counter and argue that should a school test high above the threshold, that the community would certainly rally around that concept in order to get whatever was needed to mitigate the problem.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Representative Baker. Oh, got your question answered. Very good. Anyone else have a question?
I do have a question. This is not the first time this argument has come up, and the danger of radon is real, but also what is real is the cost of mitigation, and it can be millions of dollars for a school thousands of dollars for a home. And the devil in the detail is once you test it and you know it's there, what kind of an exposure do you have if you don't have the money to fix it from outside sources that now would come in on a lawsuit? I don't have an answer for this. I just know this is a big issue. We don't have the money to effectively address it completely. What is the exposure if you test, you now know that it's there, and you don't mitigate it?
I agree, and I can't answer your question necessarily from a legal perspective. There may be exposure, there may not, but I just don't see that as an excuse to not know what carcinogen is in a facility that my child may be attending school at. So I guess that may be just a philosophical position, but I do stand behind that position. Whether or not the community wants to rally around or remove their child from the setting, they should have that option. But I don't think we should not test for radon because we don't have an appropriation in case we find it. I just don't think that argument holds water.
Thank you so much. Any other questions? Very good. This concludes the first hearing on House Bill 820. Well, this was a quick meeting. With no further business before the committee today, we are adjourned. We will see you next Wednesday.