MY APPROACH

 

Expand healthcare access: I'll work to ensure everyone has affordable, quality healthcare regardless of employment or immigration status. I'll push to reduce costs and insurance complexity, close remaining coverage gaps, and make healthcare accessible to all. No one should delay care because of cost or fear.

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Protect consumers when hospitals close: On the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, I helped create what became the FARM law (Financial Assessment and Risk Monitoring), a consumer protection framework requiring annual financial screening of institutions at risk of closure, mandatory contingency planning, and advance notification. When Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer closed without warning in the Steward Health Care bankruptcy, communities were left scrambling with no early warning system and no transition plan. I'll extend the FARM architecture to hospital closures so that communities, workers, and patients get the advance notice and protection they deserve.

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Make medications affordable: I'll increase transparency in drug pricing, address price gouging on older medications, and reform pharmacy benefit manager practices that drive up costs with no benefit to patients. Massachusetts should not be a state where people ration insulin.

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Defend life sciences research and innovation: Federal cuts to NIH funding threaten breakthrough research and Massachusetts jobs. Governor Healey proposed the DRIVE Initiative, a $400 million commitment to backfill NIH cuts and keep researchers in Massachusetts. The House wants to cut that in half and restrict it to state institutions, which would leave private research universities and hospitals, the core of our life sciences ecosystem, without support. I'll fight for the full DRIVE Initiative as proposed. I spent nearly two decades building the Massachusetts tech and innovation ecosystem and I understand how research funding, startup formation, and commercial deployment connect. Losing researchers to other states or other countries is not a recoverable loss.

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Address surprise billing and medical bankruptcy: I'll support transparency in healthcare pricing, protect patients from surprise medical bills, and ensure families don't face financial ruin from medical emergencies. No one should go bankrupt because they called an ambulance.

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Expand mental health access: I'll push to increase the availability of mental health providers, reduce wait times, expand insurance coverage for mental health services, and ensure parity between mental and physical health coverage. A broken leg gets treatment the same day. A mental health crisis should too.

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Address the youth mental health crisis: The data on youth anxiety, depression, and loneliness is alarming and worsening. I'll expand services for children and adolescents, support families navigating mental health challenges, increase school counselors and supports, and reduce the stigma and barriers that keep young people from getting help. I'll also support evidence-based guidelines on device and social media use in schools. Children need unstructured, tech-free time for brain development and social learning, and schools should be thoughtful about when technology genuinely adds educational value versus when it displaces the human connection that screens cannot replicate.

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Support addiction treatment and harm reduction: I'll expand access to treatment, support harm reduction approaches, ensure Narcan availability, and support people in recovery. Addiction is a public health issue, not a moral failing.

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Protect reproductive rights: Massachusetts has led the nation on reproductive rights and must continue to do so. I'll defend access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, support providers, and ensure Massachusetts remains a haven for patients from states where care has been banned. Massachusetts enacted the original Shield Law in 2022 to protect patients and providers from out-of-state legal threats, and updated it with Shield Act 2.0 in August 2025, which strengthens patient confidentiality, protects providers from out-of-state prosecution, requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care when medically necessary, and covers gender-affirming care. I'll fight to defend and build on these protections as the current federal administration continues to escalate its attacks on reproductive freedom.

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Support the healthcare workforce: Provider shortages, burnout, and administrative burden are driving talented people out of healthcare. I'll support training pathways, competitive compensation, and reducing the administrative load that takes clinicians away from patient care.

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