Candidates discuss health care, drug prices at PACE forum
WOONSOCKET – Health care, the high cost of prescription drugs and the opioid crisis were among the topics of the day as a bi-partisan panel of state and local candidates for elective office campaigned at the adult day care center, PACE.
The panel included four Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Allan Fung, mayor of Cranston; U.S. Senate candidate Robert “Bob” Flanders; Pat Cortellessa, who is running for secretary of state; and Patrick Donovan, a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrats
were Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea and – even though she’s not allowed to affiliate in the city’s non-partisan elections – Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt.
Although the participants were given a minute each to make a sales pitch for their candidacies, they spent about 45 minutes answering questions from a handful of clients and staff members of PACE. There were about 70 spectators in all from both groups, who noshed on minestrone soup for lunch after listening to the answers.
“I started out as a garbageman in my hometown,” said Flanders, explaining how he worked his way through Brown University, became a lawyer and, eventually, won an appointment to serve as a justice of the state Supreme Court. Flanders unexpectedly resigned from the position in 2004 and may be just as well known as the court-appointed receiver who controversially managed Central Falls’ 2011 journey through municipal bankruptcy.
Flanders said he decided to take on Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse because he was frustrated by the partisanship that’s paralyzed Washington politics and was looking for a way to perform public service to “the state that’s been so good to me.”
When a client asked Flanders to describe the status of the health care system and what could be done to improve it, he said he’d start with ending the government ban on negotiating for lower prescription drug prices.
“Their hands are tied,” said Flanders. “I’m appalled that we’re paying these high prices. We need to take more aggressive action.”
Flanders took a shot at a single-payer, government-run health care system – the holy grail of politics among some Democrats – expressing doubt that such a system would ever work. The taxes required to pay for it would be too onerous, he said.
But Flanders said injecting more competition into the industry of health insurance could bring costs down and make health care more affordable. For one thing, consumers should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines.
“Let’s introduce more competition, more choice, more transparency,” Flanders said.
Flanders said his opponent is running ads that warn the elderly that the Republicans in Congress are coming after their Social Security and Medicare to pay down the deficit. The claims are “complete falsehoods,” Flanders said. “That’s not going to happen. He’s trying to scare you into supporting him.”
Cortellessa, the only candidate whose opponent was also in the PACE community room, also had an idea about Social Security: “We should stop taxing Social Security on the elderly,” he said, noting that Rhode Island is one of the few states that does it. “That must stop.”
Fung fielded a similar question about how Rhode Island could do a better job of improving access to health care that’s funneled through government-managed programs. Fung said government reimbursement rates for medical procedures are “woefully low” compared to Massachusetts and Connecticut. They’d have to rise to expand services, but how is the question, Fung suggested.
“We have to fundamentally change health care as a whole in many different ways,” Fung said, offering few specifics.
Not all of the campaign chatter focused on health care. Gorbea said she’d made good on her promise of four years ago to improve the state’s elections and business databases, proving that “government can work for people.” If granted another term, Gorbea said, one of her priorities would be to establish an archive for the state’s irreplaceable records, which are now at risk.
“We have 380 years of history,” she said. It’s “stored in boxes, in a flood zone.”
Another client asked Baldelli-Hunt to identify her biggest challenge and explain how she intends to handle it. In an apparent reference to the city’s brush with bankruptcy,
Baldelli-Hunt said the most critical challenges have already been addressed, allowing her to focus on “cleaning up the quality of life.”
One way she’s doing that, she said, is to continue eradicating a backlog of blighted residential property. To date, she said, the city has razed more than 10 percent of the roughly 200 vacant and abandoned houses that lined city streets when she took office.
“We’re targeting the quality of life,” she said. “We’re going to continue to do that to keep our city safe.”
At another point, Flanders and Donovan, who is running against Democratic U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, both decried the crisis of opioid addiction that’s wreaking havoc across the state – and the nation. Flanders blamed Whitehouse for spearheading a law that makes it harder for law enforcement to go after “pill mills” – a law he’d try to repeal as a member of the Senate.
Donovan agreed that pharmaceutical companies need to take more responsibility for the opioid plague.
“It was a business decision...to poison us,” he said at one point.
Staffers at PACE say they invited the candidates to speak on the issues to keep their clients civically engaged and encourage them or family members to vote. PACE provides adult day care and support services to about 300 clients at locations in Woonsocket, Providence and Westerly. Some live on their own but many reside in nursing homes and assisted living centers.
“This event is part of an initiative to help our participants get out the vote at every stage of life,” says Joan Kwiatkowski, CEO of PACE. “The ideals and opinions of our participants are extremely important to us, and they are encouraged to express themselves.”