A Health Care Agenda
That Gives Hope to Washington’s Citizens

“A couple of weeks ago I spoke with a 70-year-old retired beautician. Because of a heart condition, she’s had to go back to work full-time to pay for her health insurance supplement to Medicare. She lived in her house all last winter without heat because she can’t afford to replace her furnace, pay utilities, and pay her monthly health insurance premium. It’s time for someone to lead the way to universal coverage. I’m ready to stand up for quality, affordable health care.”

Every year in Olympia, we give tax breaks to large corporations in the hopes that economic prosperity will lead to family wage jobs with good benefits for the citizens of Washington State. We are told that these tax breaks will lead to low unemployment and more access to health care. In fact, no matter how many tax breaks we have given in the last decade, health care costs have continued to skyrocket and thousands more people have become uninsured. THIS STRATEGY IS NOT WORKING! I strongly support auditing all tax breaks (some have been on the books since the 1960s) and eliminating the tax breaks which are not improving the economy or creating jobs. These funds will be shifted to the priorities outlined below.

As your legislator I will work to . . .

• Fund health care for children. More than 45,000 Washington children lost their health insurance during the last sixteen months. Too often the legislature has looked at health care as the place to make the biggest cuts. Last year, Olympia cut health care by $765 million, taking money away from Basic Health, hospital ER funding, and Medicaid. I’ll stand up to defend health care for kids.

• Fund health care for working families. Washington’s Basic Health Plan was created to extend coverage to working families who can’t get health care from their employer. In 2002, voters asked the legislature to use resources from the cigarette tax to offer more coverage under Basic Health. The legislature ignored the voters’ priorities and instead cut 30,000 people off of Basic Health. I’ll stand up to make sure that working people can get access to health care.

• Hold large corporations accountable for providing access to care. More large corporations aren’t providing affordable health benefits. Instead, companies like Wal-Mart expect their employees to rely on Basic Health or Medicaid to get care—Wal-Mart has more employees using the Basic Health plan than any other business in Washington. I’ll support legislation that requires large employers to either provide benefits or pay their share of covering Washingtonians.

• Ensure safe and quality care for our elderly and developmentally disabled residents. Long- term care services for our state’s elderly and developmentally disabled are provided primarily from publicly funded programs administered by the State. In the past, Washington set a national example in its dedication to quality care for our state’s most vulnerable residents, but has been steadily backing away from that commitment, leaving our aging and disabled residents even more vulnerable. I will work to reverse cuts to the system and support increased wages and benefits through collective bargaining for health care providers.

• Expand access to quality mental health care. Caring for the mentally ill should be an important public service but, because of budget cuts, too often it’s a struggle to get access to affordable quality mental health care. Most private insurance doesn’t cover treatment for mental illness. I will support adequate funding for treating the mentally ill, and I will support mental health parity legislation that will require insurers to provide access to mental health care.

• Make sure state government does its part. For the past several years, the legislature has shifted health care costs onto Washington’s education, public service, public health care workers and their families. Those cuts ripple across the state and encourage other employers to cut benefits. As an employer, Washington state should help hold up the standard for health coverage by offering adequate benefits to its employees. I’ll oppose any additional efforts to weaken standards for health care for working families in Washington.