Meeting with Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi's Office

Today we met with Jenn Hardy, the Office Assistant for our California State Assemblyman, Al Muratsuchi.

We were looking for two things, either of which might result in better ways to help find missing people, especially those, like Nancy, who are suffering from a debilitating disease.

1. We asked if we could have some insight into how the database of Medi-Cal applications is structured.  If we can get a toe in the door here, we can potentially find an efficient way to search for applications that may be indicators of missing persons.  We volunteered free technical support to look into this problem.
2. We also related our frustrations with getting answers from (some) hospitals, due to either some misguided sense of personal privacy laws (HIPAA), or simply an inability to answer our questions.  Given this, it was suggested that some legislation might be appropriate that would compel hospitals, in certain circumstances, to report unidentified patients to the police; in order for the Missing Persons Bureau of the police would have that information pushed to them, rather than having them pull it out.  (Informing the police seems to be sort of a standard practice in Orange County, but rare in LA County - just our observation).  Ms. Hardy informed us that the deadline for proposing new legislation for 2017 has already passed, but was willing to have their office look into something for 2018.

We are quite appreciative of the time that Ms. Hardy gave us and look forward to any progress she can make on either of these areas.