By Hirschi H.B. No. 3587 75R10104 T A BILL TO BE ENTITLED 1-1 AN ACT 1-2 relating to granting authority for certain County-Municipality 1-3 Hospital Boards created under Section 265.031, Subtitle C, Title 4, 1-4 Health and Safety Code to acquire, lease or manage other hospitals 1-5 within the same county, in order to displace competition with 1-6 regulation, maintain local control over health care and allow 1-7 County-Municipality Hospital Boards to benefit from economies of 1-8 scale. 1-9 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS: 1-10 SECTION 1. Section 265.037, Health and Safety Code, is 1-11 amended by adding subsection (d) to read as follows: 1-12 (d) A County-Municipality Hospital Board existing in a 1-13 county with a population of more than 100,000 and a city with a 1-14 population of more than 75,000 may acquire, lease or manage, 1-15 directly or indirectly, and sublease one or more health care 1-16 facilities as an exercise of its powers as a public agency and body 1-17 politic pursuant to state policy to displace competition with 1-18 regulation and regardless of whether doing so might be considered 1-19 anticompetitive under the antitrust laws of the United States or 1-20 this State. 1-21 SECTION 2. The importance of this legislation and the 1-22 crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an 1-23 emergency and an imperative public necessity that the 1-24 constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several 2-1 days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended, 2-2 and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its 2-3 passage, and it is so enacted.