As a physical therapist for the past 20 years, my job has been to help people in the midst of very challenging situations. Older folks desperate to get back home after a fall, younger people who need to regain mobility to meet demands of work and family, people who will work as hard as necessary to be able to dance at their child’s wedding.
I work with people who are frustrated, in pain, struggling with both physical ailments and, frequently, with the failings of our for-profit healthcare system.
When I worked as a home care physical therapist, I was surprised and dismayed to discover that up to half of my time had to be devoted to filing paperwork for the bureaucratic black hole of our health insurance system.
All of that was time that I could have been spending helping patients.
I was also surprised to discover the depth of my patients’ other needs, and quickly took on the role of connecting vulnerable seniors with the services they needed to be able to remain in their homes.
Many of my patients and neighbors have benefited from programs like SNAP and HEAP – nutrition and heating assistance – both of which have been slashed by the current federal administration.
Politicians who have never been in the homes I've been in think that these cuts will save the government money, but they won't.
Seniors who we don't support in their homes frequently end up requiring far more extensive, more expensive care in assisted living centers. And cuts to Medicaid and Medicare further endanger those centers that care for our most in-need senior and disabled neighbors.
“I’m running for New York State Assembly District 102 because we desperately need elected leaders who want to serve people, not corporate profits.”
When elected, I will be one of only a handful of state representatives who have a background in healthcare.
In order to fix these systems, we need to have people in the room who have worked with these systems and seen firsthand how they need to change.
I've served on the Delhi Town Board, and currently I serve on the Delhi village board.
In those roles, I've seen similar challenges and opportunities to improve housing affordability, utility fairness and transparency, and more. Whether the topic is unnecessary rate hikes by utility companies, or corporate investors buying up limited housing stock and pricing out would-be homeowners, my promise to you is that I will always serve people before profits.
I have never taken a dime from corporate PACs and I never will.
