Nurses and Needles

The costs of college and graduate education have soared out of control. I’m a strong advocate for giving people less expensive ways to learn what they need to know in order to work.  Overly broad professional licensure requirements can contribute to unnecessarily high education costs and generally to higher costs for consumers. We only let …

Legislative Briefing by Health Connector

The Health Connector provided a  briefing today to legislative offices to provide information that would be useful to constituents who have or will apply for health insurance through the Connector. The briefing materials, which you will find below, provide suggestions for applying for health insurance, checking into the status of your application, navigating the website, …

Public Health Insurance Option

I’ve recently been receiving notices that constituents of mine have been signing a MoveOn petition urging me to support Senate 514, An Act Establishing a Public Health Insurance Option. Senate 514 is a serious, well-assembled legislative proposal which speaks to important issues — strengthening competition in the health insurance market place and improving access to …

Special Committee on Section 35 & Drug Addiction

Senate President Murray announced the creation of a Special Committee on drug addiction issues with a particular focus on “Section 35” which pertains to involuntary commitments of persons with substance abuse issues to treatment.  I look forward to serving on the committee — Massachusetts faces an epidemic of substance abuse  and I’ve long had a …