CSG Committee on Suggested State Legislation

This Act generally authorizes licensed skilled nursing facilities and hospice facilities to use remote automated medication systems when such facilities do not have pharmacies on-site. 

This Act generally requires a court, when admonishing a jury against conversation, research,  or dissemination of information pursuant to the trial, to clearly explain, as part of the admonishment, that the prohibition applies to all forms of electronic and wireless communication. It requires the officer in charge of a jury to prevent any form of electronic or wireless communication. The Act makes violating such admonishment punishable as civil or criminal contempt of court.

Increasingly, state governments are publishing laws, statutes, agency rules, and court rules  and decisions online. In some states, important state-level legal material is no longer published in books, but is only available online. While electronic publication of legal material has facilitated public access to the material, it has also raised concerns. Is the legal material official, authentic, government data that has not been altered? For the long term, how will this electronic legal material be preserved? How will the public access the material 10, 50, or 100 years from now? The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) provides states with an outcomes-based approach to the authentication and preservation of electronic legal material. The goals of the authentication and preservation program outlined in the Act are to enable end-users to verify the trustworthiness of the legal material they are using and to provide a framework for states to preserve legal material in perpetuity in a manner that allows for permanent access.

This Act defines a “Retained Asset Account” as “any mechanism whereby the settlement of proceeds payable under a life insurance policy, including but not limited to the payment of cash surrender value, is accomplished by the insurer or an entity acting on behalf of the insurer depositing the proceeds into an account where those proceeds are retained by the insurer, pursuant to a supplementary contract not involving annuity benefits.” The legislation precludes insurers from using a retained asset account as the mode of settlement of payment to a life insurance beneficiary unless the insurer discloses the use of a retained asset account to the beneficiary or the beneficiary's legal representative prior to the transfer of life insurance proceeds to a retained asset account.The Act requires insurers to inform a beneficiary about the right to receive a lump-sum payment of life insurance proceeds in the form of a bank check or similar other immediate full payment of benefits. It requires insurers to disclose all payment options available to beneficiaries, in written or electronic format, upon the distribution of anything other than a lump-sum payment of life insurance proceeds. The bill sets forth specific disclosure requirements upon the use of a retained asset account rather than a lump-sum payment. It establishes annual insurer reporting requirements to the department of insurance about retained asset accounts. The legislation requires all marketing materials, disclosure statements, and supplemental contract forms used in connection with retained asset accounts to be filed with the department of insurance prior to their use. The Act authorizes the commissioner to disapprove any materials, statements, or forms that are inconsistent with the provisions of the section or are otherwise untrue, unfair, deceptive, false, or misleading. The legislation requires insurers to return any balance held in a retained asset account to the beneficiary if no funds are withdrawn from the account, or if no affirmative directive has been  provided to the insurer by the beneficiary, during any continuous three-year period.