HB 1608-FN - AS INTRODUCED
2022 SESSION
22-2362
05/10
HOUSE BILL 1608-FN
SPONSORS: Rep. Prout, Hills. 37; Rep. Blasek, Hills. 21; Rep. T. Lekas, Hills. 37; Rep. Lanzara, Hills. 28
COMMITTEE: Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs
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ANALYSIS
This bill requires the department of health and human services to contact individuals who, pursuant to emergency order #76, were not given an opportunity to opt out of having COVID-19 vaccination information included in the state immunization registry.
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Explanation: Matter added to current law appears in bold italics.
Matter removed from current law appears [in brackets and struckthrough.]
Matter which is either (a) all new or (b) repealed and reenacted appears in regular type.
22-2362
05/10
STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty Two
Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:
1 Legislative Findings.
I. New Hampshire voters passed the Right of Privacy, Article 2-a of the New Hampshire constitution in November 2018, with an 81 percent approval rating. With that vote, state government culture and behavior needed to be shaped by the words, “An individual's right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent."
II. Medical records are some of the most private and personal information, and must only be accessed by consent or extraordinary justification.
III. Even when such extraordinary justification is declared to exist, the intrusion absent consent must be limited to only the absolute minimum necessary to achieve the stated purpose.
IV. When the justification expires, the burden falls on the state to restore, to the maximum extent possible, the circumstances that previously existed to minimize the injury to this natural, essential, and inherent right.
V. The general court finds that the state should not continue to keep the private medical information of individuals that were not afforded the opportunity to choose if they wished it to be collected.
2 New Hampshire Immunization Registry; Follow Up by Department of Health and Human Services Required. The department of health and human services shall contact all individuals whose COVID-19 vaccination information was included in the New Hampshire immunization registry, established under RSA 141-C:20-f, without the opportunity to opt-out pursuant to Emergency Order #76. The contact shall include this text: "Information on your COVID-19 vaccination was included in the New Hampshire Immunization/Vaccination Registry. Due to the COVID-19 state of emergency, you were not afforded the opportunity to opt-out of this information collection. However, you may now choose if you wish to continue having your information maintained in the registry. Please indicate your choice below and return this form. If you do not contact the department, your information will be removed on [the date calculated from the below]."
I. The department may make up to 3 attempts to contact an individual before the information shall be removed.
II. If after 6 months from the effective date of this section the department has not received a response from an individual, their information collected without an opportunity to opt-out pursuant to Emergency Order #76 shall be removed from the registry and any other agency records where the information is individually identifiable.
3 Effective Date. This act shall take effect 60 days after its passage.
22-2362
Redraft 12/20/21
HB 1608-FN- FISCAL NOTE
AS INTRODUCED
FISCAL IMPACT: [ X ] State [ ] County [ ] Local [ ] None
Estimated Increase / (Decrease)
STATE:
FY 2022
FY 2023
FY 2024
FY 2025
Appropriation
$0
$0
$0
$0
Revenue
$0
$0
$0
$0
Expenditures
$0
$1.3 million - $7 million
$0
$0
Funding Source:
[ X ] General [ ] Education [ ] Highway [ ] Other
METHODOLOGY:
This bill requires the Department of Health and Human Services, pursuant to emergency order #76, to contact individuals who were not given an opportunity to opt out of having their COVID-19 vaccine information included in the state's vaccine registry. Specifically, the bill requires the Department to contact individuals up to three times before removing their information from the registry in the event of non-response. The Department states there were approximately 790,000 individuals vaccinated prior to the expiration of emergency order #76 on June 11, 2021. The bill does not specify a method of contact; based on an existing contract with a call center, the Department assumes that contacting individuals by phone would be the most expensive method, at an estimated cost of $6.2 million to contact all 790,000 individuals over a six-month period. The Department estimates the cost of mailing a single letter to each individual to be approximately $810,000 ($0.75 per letter or $592,500 for all 790,000 people, plus $210,000 for staffing costs). Alternatively, the Department states that emailing each individual would require hiring a cloud-based marketing vendor, resulting in estimated licensing fees of $95,000 and $250,000 in professional services costs. Finally, the Department states that contacting individuals by text message would cost approximately $30,000 for a six-month contract with a vendor. In recognition of the fact that a combination of these methods may be needed to contact all individuals three times within the time period specified by the bill, the Department projects the bill's cost to be between $1.3 million and $7 million, depending on the methods chosen.
It assumed any fiscal impact will occur in FY 2023.
AGENCIES CONTACTED:
Department of Health and Human Services