The following are laws enacted regarding the issues of Lyme and other Tick-borne Illnesses.  Federal laws are listed in reverse chronically order with links to the source documents as available. Those laws that deal with the individual states may be accessed through the link below.

RE: Misuse of 'Lyme Case Definition' for diagnosis, standard of care by the healthcare industry and medical licensing hearings.

Public Law 107-116 signed by President Bush 1/10/02 for the Departments of Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act 2002, encouraged the CDC and CSTE to address this issue on a national scale. Excerpt:

The Committee is distressed in hearing of the widespread misuse of the current Lyme disease surveillance case definition. While the CDC does state that `this surveillance case definition was developed for national reporting of Lyme disease: it is NOT appropriate for clinical diagnosis,' the definition is reportedly misused as a standard of care for healthcare reimbursement, product (test) development, medical licensing hearings, and other legal cases. The CDC is encouraged to aggressively pursue and correct the misuse of this definition. This includes issuing an alert to the public and physicians, as well as actively issuing letters to places misusing this definition. The Committee recommends that the CDC strongly support the re-examination and broadening of the Lyme disease surveillance case definition by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Voluntary and patient groups should have input into this process. Currently there is just one definition (`confirmed case') of seven possible categories. By developing other categories while leaving the current category intact, the true number of cases being diagnosed and treated will be more accurately counted, lending to improved public health planning for finding solutions to the infection.