Legislative Updates
HB 681 – Eliminating School BMI Screenings
Introduced by Rep. Danielle Friel Otten – Passed House 158-45 on 6/11/2025
For the past two decades, schools have been required to use a student’s height and weight to calculate each student’s BMI. Too often, these BMI calculations become a point of conversation among students as students receive information about their position in a range of BMI categories from underweight to healthy to obese.
My bill would ensure that a student's height and weight measurements are collected in a way that protects student confidentiality and that BMI calculations are depersonalized before being shared with the PA Department of Health. BMI calculations would not be provided to students unless requested in writing by the parent. Parents could also choose to opt their students out of height and weight screenings.
Calculating BMI in schools was initially intended to help identify students at risk for weight-related health issues, but research has increasingly shown that this practice is not only ineffective but can also be harmful. Relying on BMI as a standalone metric for evaluating student health can lead to inaccurate assumptions and stigmatize children with a higher BMI.
This legislation now moves to the Senate for consideration.
HB 1460 - Protecting Pennsylvania Health Services and Facilities
Introduced by Rep. Lisa Borowski – Passed House 121-82 on 6/10/2025
Across our commonwealth, healthcare is under siege by for-profit private equity firms that drain resources from our communities and make it impossible for people to access care. Private equity firms have one function: to maximize short-term profits for investors at the expense of long-term stability and community service, with patients and care providers as afterthoughts.
We have seen the negative impacts private equity has on our community hospitals time and time again – Brandywine, Jennersville, Crozier, and Hahnemann just to name a few – and the playbook is almost always the same: Buy a struggling healthcare provider, load up debt, cut staff and services to keep it profitable and then cash out and walk away before the bill comes due. Or they double-dip using a sale-leaseback agreement to charge themselves rent on the land or facilities, driving up patient costs while extracting every dollar possible.
Healthcare should be about helping people, not boosting profits. We need to protect our patients, our senior citizens, our medical staff, and our communities. I voted for HB 1460 because it strengthens oversight, accountability, and public input of risky hospital, nursing home, and hospice sales, mergers or acquisitions by private equity firms.
This bill would:
- Prohibit healthcare sale-leaseback agreements by private equity firms;
- Require healthcare entities to submit detailed financial and operational disclosures before completing major transactions.
This basic, sensible policy protects our healthcare system by strengthening oversight and opportunities for public input, protecting our healthcare systems from predatory business practices and ensuring that we put people – not profits – first.
This legislation now moves to the Senate for consideration.
HB 1549 – Raise the Wage Act
Introduced by Rep. Jason Dawkins – Passed House 102-101 on 6/11/2025
To build an economy that works for everyone we need to make sure people get a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work. As of last year, roughly 47,000 working Pennsylvanians were earning minimum wage or less and approximately 255,000 working Pennsylvanians were earning near the minimum wage, ranging from $7.26 to $12.00 per hour. That’s 300,000 Pennsylvanians barely making ends meet.
Let’s look at how this adds up for the average Pennsylvanian. An individual making minimum wage in Pennsylvania makes a rough estimate of $1,261.50 per month. The average rent in Pennsylvania for a studio apartment is $1,267 per month (for a one-bedroom apartment, that increases to $1,505 per month). Someone working a minimum wage job for $1,000 a month wouldn’t even be able to afford a studio apartment in Pennsylvania – let alone the cost of food, childcare, gas, public transportation, medications, and any other emergency cost that may come up. People working hard should be able to afford the basic necessities of life.
This bill starts to move Pennsylvania in the right direction by taking a regional approach to raising the outdated minimum wage, just like the successful models found in Oregon and New York. This bill would get every Pennsylvania worker to at least $12 an hour by January 2028 at the latest, with subsequent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increases.
I do have concerns about some provisions of this bill, and while I understand the need for compromise and negotiation in our two-party, two-chamber General Assembly, I would like to see us take a more ambitious step forward for Pennsylvania’s workers. I voted in support of this legislation because Pennsylvania is long overdue to take action on the minimum wage, and we need to continue the conversation.
This legislation now moves to the Senate for consideration.