Aid for Adults, Children Lacking Health Insurance Heads for House Vote
One of the most ambitious proposals of the legislative session, a bill to offer health insurance to up to 250,000 of Maryland's uninsured residents, will go to the House floor for a vote next week. The big question is whether it can clear the Senate.
The Children and Working Families Healthcare Act would use about $212 million a year from a $1-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax, plus millions of dollars leveraged from the federal government, to enroll poor adults and moderate-income children in the Medicaid program.
  Del. Saqib Ali (D-Montgomery) co-sponsored a bill that would exempt Muslims training to be morticians from having to embalm. The bill passed the Maryland House yesterday. (By Michel Du Cille -- The Washington Post) Take the Challenge
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The bill passed the Health and Government Operations Committee yesterday with broad support.
"In order to really have health-care reform in the state, we have to start by making sure we have an appropriate safety net," said a jubilant Peter A. Hammen (D-Baltimore), the committee chairman. Some key provisions of the bill were removed to cut costs, however, including subsidies to small businesses to provide coverage for their employees and a mandate that those who can afford insurance but choose not to buy it must do so.
The measure is a top priority of House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel). But in the Senate, President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) has said repeatedly that any new revenue from the cigarette tax should be used to help erase the state's projected budget shortfall. Stay tuned.
-- Lisa Rein
Mortician Bill Clears House
A bill that acknowledges the growing political clout of Maryland's Muslim community cleared the House of Delegates unanimously yesterday and is headed to the Senate.
The bill addresses complaints from Muslim leaders that their community is served by just one licensed mortician in the Washington region, in the District.
Since Muslims do not practice embalming but perform a ritual cleansing of the body instead, they have not been able to break into the funeral home industry in Maryland. That's because anyone applying for a mortician's license must embalm and perform cosmetic work on at least 20 dead bodies as an apprentice, a practice banned by Islamic law.
The bill would open the industry to Muslims by exempting them from embalming as they learn the trade, creating two licensing tracks for morticians -- those who embalm and those who don't.
