People in Rhode Island are suffering. They need a doctor and they can’t find one. They need treatment and they can’t afford it. There aren’t enough physicians left in this state. The ones we have are buried. And for the people who do get seen, the insurance company sets the deductible so high they still can’t afford to use the coverage they pay for. We are a state where you can have insurance and still not have care.
I believe healthcare is a right. I believe Rhode Island can and should lead this country to universal coverage, and I have done the work to prove it can be built. But the family that can’t get a pediatric appointment this month cannot wait for the healthcare system of the future. They need a doctor now. So my plan works in stages. Build toward the system we need. Fix the system we have. Today.
And the system we have is broken in a specific, fixable place. I found the stink, because I work inside it. I’m a firefighter and a Cardiac EMT, and I meet the patients this system failed in the back of the ambulance. I also work as an agent fighting erroneous insurance denials, so I watch the other end of the pipe: insurance companies paying Rhode Island primary care doctors about 30 percent less than the same visit earns across the Massachusetts line, then delaying, denying, and defending against the claims they do owe. Doctors do the math and leave. Practices close. Patients lose their physician and land in my ambulance with an emergency that started as something a fifteen-minute visit could have caught.
The insurance companies did this. The state has the power to undo it. Not someday. This session.
Here is how we do it. Three planks.
One. Make Rhode Island a state doctors want to work in. A reimbursement floor pegged to what Massachusetts and Connecticut pay. The financial reason to leave disappears. The bleeding stops the day the law takes effect, and recruitment follows.
Two. Pay the providers. In full, on time, every time. A clean claim gets paid automatically at the benchmark rate. If the insurer thinks it overpaid, it pays first and sorts it out after, on its own dime. Penalties stack daily, no paperwork required from the doctor. Delay, deny, defend is over.
Three. Every insurer countermove is answered in advance. They will threaten to raise premiums; the law claws back any increase that isn’t real care spending and funds premium relief for families and small businesses. They will threaten to leave; the law requires 18 months’ notice, transition coverage for every member, and opens the door to carriers from neighboring states who already pay these rates. They will sue; the Supreme Court decided that question in 2020, unanimously, and they lost. Every move they have is countered in the text of the bill.
This is stage one. Get the doctors back. Get patients seen early and often, by a primary care physician, before the small thing becomes the emergency. That is what we can deliver right now with the power Rhode Island already holds.
Universal healthcare is where this road leads, and I’ve drafted the legislation to take us there. But the road starts here: with a doctor you can actually see, paid fairly, on time, in a state that stopped letting insurance companies decide who gets care.
Pay the providers. That’s how you get your doctor back.