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.