Healthcare

Working all over the state with people who had mobility concerns, Mark had direct, professional experience with PA's home healthcare system. He watched decisions made by our General Assembly play out as older Pennsylvanians and people with disabilities lost services while costs for taxpayers soared. The only beneficiaries of these decisions were health insurance companies. 

After a 2019 statewide privatization, insurance companies denied Pennsylvanians in-home care or the home modifications Mark managed. These denials caused many to move into nursing homes at taxpayer expense, squandering incalculable millions and exacerbating shortages on facility space. Instead of one-time payments to build ramps or install lifts or accessible showers, PA taxpayers started making similar-sized monthly payments to nursing homes for thousands of people who could have lived at home for a fraction of the cost. It’s impossible to tell how much money we are wasting not taking care of each other. 

Everyone knows it costs less money for people to live in their homes through retirement, and most people want to live at home. But bad policy is expensive, and it causes inexcusable deprivation or death for thousands of older Pennsylvanians. Mark began to see it every day, and he is willing to stand up to insurance companies for the sake of our dollars and our lives. 

Mark supports better wages, benefits, and collective bargaining rights for nurses and all healthcare workers, who always use their power to fight for staffing ratios and better care for their patients. Mark was an active supporter of SEIU’s workers during their strike in the summer of 2022. 

Mark believes there is definitive evidence showing racial disparities in access to healthcare and outcomes of treatment. These disparities need to be addressed and remediated.  

Mark considers healthcare a human right and has no doubt we would all benefit from the efficiency and accessibility of universal coverage.