DELHI — Janet Tweed, a physical therapist at O'Connor Hospital in Delhi, has announced that she is running for NYS Assembly District 102, which encompasses all of Schoharie and Greene counties and parts of Delaware, Otsego, and Albany counties. Janet served four years on the Delhi town board, and she currently serves on the Delhi village board. She also volunteers with the Rotary, the Delhi beautification committee, and Delhi's Fair on the Square committee, among others. Chris Tague, who currently represents District 102, recently announced that he is running for State Senate.
Janet released the following statement:
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 traveling home care physical therapist, I was surprised and dismayed to discover that fully 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. Did you know that the United States pays more per person for our healthcare system than any other country? We pay twice as much as other wealthy countries. We are also the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee its citizens universal healthcare. This is an economic failing and a moral failing. And it only exists because the current system is designed to benefit profits, not people.
The problems we face are not inevitable and we can fix them. Even without action by the federal government, there are things we can do here in New York to improve healthcare affordability and accessibility. To name a few:
Because of federal deregulation in the 1980s, hospitals and health insurance companies that had been not-for-profit became for-profit ventures. Not surprisingly, healthcare costs then skyrocketed. Could New York regulate these companies to combat price-gouging and excessive profit-seeking? Could we incentivize non-profit insurance agencies, hospitals, and healthcare groups?
Let's expand Medicaid eligibility. I've worked with patients on Medicaid who have to carefully track how many hours they work or turn down raises so they don't go over the extremely low Medicaid income thresholds, because their chronic, expensive health conditions would bankrupt them without Medicaid. We shouldn't be punishing people who want to get ahead by threatening to take away their insurance. Until we can achieve full universal healthcare for all, New York could expand Medicaid eligibility ourselves.
In parts of the 102nd district, we are fortunate to have school-based health clinics that offer services to all students – including well visits, dental check ups, and mental healthcare – free of charge. How could we expand that wonderful service statewide? School facilities already exist, so this would not require massive capital expenditures, but would benefit many, many children.
As we who live in the rural 102nd district know, it is sometimes very difficult to access healthcare, even when we have the means to do so. It is not uncommon for people in our district to travel 2-4 hours to receive specialist care. How can we incentivize healthcare providers to come to our areas? Could New York provide student debt relief to medical professionals who agree to work in rural areas for five years?
If elected, I would 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 also 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.
I hope to meet you over the coming year and hear your ideas about how we can strengthen our community and protect all of our neighbors, together.
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