California Health Benefit Exchange: background checks.

Under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) , each state is required, by January 1, 2014, to establish an American Health Benefit Exchange that makes available qualified health plans to qualified individuals and small employers. Existing state law establishes the California Health Benefit Exchange (Exchange) within state government, specifies the powers and duties of the executive board governing the Exchange, and requires the board to facilitate the purchase of qualified health plans through the Exchange by qualified individuals and small employers by January 1, 2014. Existing law creates the California Health Trust Fund as a continuously appropriated fund for the administrative and operational expenses of the Exchange. This bill would require the board to submit to the Department of Justice fingerprint images and related information of employees, prospective employees, contractors, subcontractors, volunteers, or vendors whose duties include or would include access to specified information for the purposes of obtaining prescribed criminal history information. The bill would require the board to require any services contract, interagency agreement, or public entity agreement, that includes or would include access to those types of information to include a provision requiring the contractor to agree to criminal background checks on its employees, contractors, agents, and subcontractors who will have access to that information as part of their services contract, interagency agreement, or public entity agreement. The bill would require the department to forward to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) requests for federal summary criminal history information, and would require the department to review the information returned from the FBI and compile and disseminate a response to the board. The bill would require the department to charge a fee sufficient to cover the costs of processing requests pursuant to the bill. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.