Issue Position: Health

Issue Position

As Vice Chair of the House Health Care & Wellness Committee Laurie has helped prepare Washington for implementation of Affordable Care Act. Laurie worked hard on the creation of Washington's Health Exchange this session. The Exchange will ensure that small business has affordable access to easily understandable health care choices and that uninsured people will have access to health care. In the 2011 session, Laurie was also successful in bringing more transparency to our non-profit hospital systems and making sure that hospitals engage with their community when making decisions about what services they will provide the community.

Before becoming a legislator, she was asked by former Governor Gary Locke and Governor Chris Gregoire to directly assist them in developing priorities for their health care budgets. Laurie's expertise has been invaluable in the legislature. Over the next decade, making health care reform work--on the ground, in people's lives--will be one of the most important jobs for the legislature. Laurie has brought a strong, experienced, practical voice of reason to these decisions. Laurie has worked successfully with the legislature in the past, winning support for mandatory notification by hospitals of restrictions placed on any practitioners within the facility, criminal background checks of individuals seeking to become licensed health care providers and a bill allowing the Department of Health to pay malpractice insurance premiums for health care providers volunteering in rural and underserved areas.

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