Pilot program for hyperbaric oxygen treatment for vets underway, grants would allow parents to pay for private school, no more claims for wrongful birth: Iowa Capitol Digest, Feb. 27

BRAIN TRAUMA TREATMENT: The Iowa House voted 96-0 to approve House File 2355 to establish a pilot program giving military veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury access to hyperbaric oxygen treatment. It's an experimental treatment that exposes TBI patients to pure oxygen at higher-than-normal air pressure. Although it shows promise, Rep. Sandy Salmon, R-Janesville, said it could be years before studies are completed and the treatment is approved by the Veterans Affairs Administration.

Rep. Todd Prichard, D-Charles City, supported the pilot program but sought to amend the bill to require medical oversight of the pilot project.

'It's just important that we act deliberately,” said Prichard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. 'If you take any risk, you minimize that risk by being deliberate in your process.”

Salmon called it unnecessary, and the amendment was rejected, 57-40.

The bill was approved 96-0.

EDUCATION SAVINGS GRANTS: Iowa's Catholic bishops lobbied lawmakers to support a plan for educational savings grants, sometimes called vouchers. As proposed, the grants, worth up to $5,000 per student, would allow parents to use state dollars to pay for private school tuition and related expenses.

Although House Study Bill 651 was pulled from the agenda by its sponsor for lack of support, Bishop Richard Pates of the Des Moines diocese said the grants would help middle class Iowa families who want to send their children to non-public schools.

'The middle class is really being squeezed,” he said at the Iowa Catholic Conference legislative reception. 'When I go into schools and parishes they always say, ‘Bishop, you've got to do something about that' because we're not able to fulfill some of our deepest convictions, which is education.”

If approved by the Legislature, Pates said, 'We'll see the sky won't fall, and the public schools will go on.”

The grants and public education are not incompatible, he added.

'I want good public education, but I also believe people should have a choice,” he said.

The Iowa Catholic Conference says it represents about 690,000 Iowans - about 23 percent of the state's population.

WRONGFUL BIRTH: The House voted 59-40 to approve House File 2405 that would prohibit claims for wrongful birth and wrongful life.

The bill stems from a 2017 Iowa Supreme Court case in which the justices joined a majority of other state courts in allowing parents of a child born with severe disabilities to bring a wrongful birth lawsuit after prenatal doctors failed to inform the parents of abnormalities found on an ultrasound before the child's birth. In that case, the woman said she would have aborted the unborn child had she been told of the abnormalities.

The bill would ban a person from bringing a wrongful birth lawsuit but does not stop a lawsuit for intentional or gross negligence, or omission on the part of medical professionals. A doctor cannot willingly hide information from a mother to prevent her from having an abortion.

The bill also prevents a wrongful life lawsuit brought by a disabled child who alleges that if it were not for the wrongful conduct of the doctor or other medical professionals, the child would never have been born. Most courts have been unwilling to grant a wrongful life lawsuit because of serious ethical and moral considerations.

Gazette Des Moines Bureau