A growing contingent of people concerned about how hospitals treat COVID-19 is calling on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto a bill the Republican Party is quickly pushing through the state’s legislature.
The Republican-led effort seeks to extend a law that grants near-immunity to health care providers for their treatment of COVID-19, as long as they follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They say the measure still is needed to help health care facilities stay solvent during the pandemic.
The original measure was passed in 2021 and was set to expire in March. But Republicans are pushing an extension bill through the Florida Legislature. The effort seeks to extend the law’s special protections for health care providers through June 1, 2023.
Contention over the bill puts DeSantis, a Republican, in a tricky spot in an election year, with 17 challengers vying for his position.
DeSantis must decide whether to support lawmakers in his own party or listen to conservative groups, setting a powerful example for governors around the country.
Participants in medical freedom rallies across Florida and the rest of the country have decried hospital behavior in the treatment of COVID-19. Many families have asked courts to intervene and help them obtain treatments for their loved ones when all other government-recommended treatments had failed.
DeSantis recently said he’s pushing Florida lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow doctors in his state to go against federal guidelines and prescribe what they think will work best for a patient. His office didn’t respond to requests for comment on the effort to extend the immunity period.
Health care experts, political activists, families who’ve lost loved ones to COVID-19, and attorneys involved in recent health care battles to obtain alternative treatments signed a letter that was hand-delivered on Feb. 14 to DeSantis’s office, asking him to veto the bill. The signers of the letter represent 25 organizations with members that number in the hundreds of thousands of Floridians, says the letter’s author, attorney R. Shawn McBride, of the American Freedom Information Institute in Maitland, Florida.
By Nanette Holt
