Healthcare & Drug Discovery - Fifth Middlesex Senate District
Maintaining Leadership While Expanding Access
Massachusetts is one of the world's leading centers for biomedical research, life sciences, and health innovation. The challenge is ensuring that breakthroughs created here don't just reach patients globally, but stay affordable and accessible for the residents of the Commonwealth who helped build the ecosystem that produced them.
At a Glance
Lipper-Garabedian centers expanding coverage, lowering prescription costs, and protecting reproductive health access, pointing to recent public programming on the topic. McDonald centers administrative waste and pricing opacity in the current hospital-insurer system as the core barrier, and supports moving toward a single-payer system to redirect those resources to patient care.
The Question Candidates Answered: "I support policies that strengthen Massachusetts' leadership in health care innovation while making breakthrough treatments more affordable, accessible, and beneficial for everyone."
Kate Lipper-Garabedian: I support this principle
How would you advance this principle if elected? As State Senator, I will continue to fight for affordable healthcare by expanding coverage, lowering prescription costs, protecting reproductive freedom, strengthening maternal health services, and ensuring every person can access abortion care, contraception, and preventive health services without barriers. You may be interested in my most recent Community Conversation, filmed this spring, which focused on Trump's attacks on marginalized communities, including communities of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community; watch it here. My second Community Conversation in 2025 included significant focus on the impacts of federal policy shifts on healthcare access.
What would success look like? Massachusetts must prioritize making health care more accessible and affordable for everyone, regardless of income or background. We should expand access to essential services, reduce costs for patients and families, and strengthen our health care infrastructure. At the same time, we must support research, innovation, and the creation of new medicines that improve lives and advance public health.
Carey McDonald: I support this principle
How would you advance this principle if elected? In addition to my response above about supporting innovation overall, I think there are particular considerations for health care and bioscience research. One of the barriers we have in health care innovation is that far too many resources are spent on large insurance company administration rather than patient care. Pricing for medical care is completely opaque and inconsistent because it is just the product of deals between big hospitals and big insurance. I support moving towards a transparent single-payer system (Medicare for All) that would allow us to redirect resources to patient care and innovation. Many hospitals have cut internal monitoring and learning teams to save money.
What would success look like? In the immediate term, we should be improving access to primary care and the number of people going into primary care positions. Far too many people are waiting forever for an appointment. With a single payer system, we can also use our shared bargaining power to bring down prescription costs for all our residents.
Ryan O'Malley: not available