Rethinking Healthcare and Passing Medicare for All

Healthcare is a human right. Yet in my own life, I have seen the health care system fail too many loved ones. My mother Ramona was a beautiful person and loving mom who despite working hard to raise two children while opening and running her own salon and going back to school while I was in college to get her degree, still never got the health care she needed. She suffered from a chronic illness for years that was never properly diagnosed due to fragmented health care and patchy Medicaid coverage. She grew sicker and never got the opportunities for recovery that she and our family should have been given. She passed away suddenly in 2020 at just 55 years old. Too many families have lost loved ones needlessly and tragically, and I’m ready to go to Congress to lift up the stories of families across the 9th District who are harmed by our woefully broken health care system.

I remember when I got injured in high school while running competitively. My mom could not afford the kind of health insurance that would have enabled me to receive treatment and I was cut from the team. No parent should have to keep their child from giving outlet to their talents because of health insurance coverage.

Then in my early 30s, I started my own small business and struggled to gain access to the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges due to the high costs at the time. There were several months where I went without insurance as a small business owner, which many entrepreneurs encounter as they grow their businesses. Our country has made some progress in the last decade on expanded coverage, but it’s going to take a new generation and new blood to forcefully push for progressive policy and systemic change so that quality coverage, healthier outcomes, and less costly care are the usual.

In the richest country in the world, medical bankruptcy and millions of uninsured people cannot be the status quo. For too many people in Illinois and nationwide, healthcare feels like a rationed good: the care you receive depends on where you live and work, who you know, and the time and money you can afford to spend navigating a broken system. This system, implicitly and explicitly, tells us that some people deserve care and other people don’t. That is not acceptable, and makes all of us less healthy and health care overall more costly as a result. We cannot continue to have publicly-traded and private equity-owned companies wreaking havoc on delivering and accessing healthcare in this country and across Chicagoland. Various and ever-increasing sectors of the healthcare industry are being ruled by companies forming a monopoly, answering to shareholders, investors, and operating partners over patients.

I bring critical lived experiences and several legislative accomplishments to the health care debate. One of the first bills I introduced in the State Senate in 2021 and 2022 would have expanded Medicaid eligibility to 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. This would be the first real step toward Medicare for All in Illinois, along with legislation I strongly supported which at its peak provided Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants between 42 and 64 years of age. In the Illinois Senate, I have fought for expanded coverage at every turn that would bring sweeping expansions to coverage for those who are underinsured or who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

My vision for universal health care is not just about increasing the number of people who are covered, but also the types of care covered and how that care is provided. Preventative, diagnostic, and specialty care are all healthcare. Dental care and vision care are healthcare. Reproductive care and gender-affirming care are healthcare. Prescription drugs should be affordable, not an opportunity for corporate greed. Providers should lead with compassion and cultural competency, and policymakers should lead with a reckoning of how healthcare has historically failed specific communities.

Every single person in this country, regardless of their race, class, immigration status, gender or sexual orientation, has a right to dignity in their healthcare. To achieve that reality we need Medicare for All.

My record in the Illinois Senate is centered on this vision: removing barriers and lowering costs of keeping all people healthy. I serve as chairperson of the Senate Public Health Committee and Vice Chair of the Behavioral and Mental Health Committee, and serve on several health care appropriations committees where I’ve brought vigorous oversight to our state’s health care programs and pushed for more humane and culturally-appropriate public health programs and policy across Illinois.

In the Illinois Senate, here are a few of my healthcare legislative accomplishments:

• Created the Illinois’ Medical Debt Relief Pilot Program, which has as of November 2025 erased $430 million dollars of medical debt for nearly 357,000 Illinois residents since 2024. I would lead efforts to cancel medical debt at the federal level, just like I've done in the State Senate
• Amended the Fair Patient Billing Act to prohibit unfair billing practices and abusive collection tactics by hospitals against patients who are uninsured and have already demonstrated they cannot pay
• Amended the Illinois Insurance Code to provide fully cost-free liver disease screenings and diagnostic tests for at-risk patients. Liver disease, the 9th leading cause of death in the country at the time of passage, disproportionately affects survivors of addiction and substance use.
• Amended the Reproductive Health Act to protect access to gender-affirming care for all people, against Republicans and conservative Democrats, alongside enshrining reproductive rights
• Authored the Illinois Pharmacy Act to expand access to PrEP and PEP from pharmacists without a doctor’s prescription, removing a systemic obstacle to lifesaving medication to help reduce new HIV diagnoses