Our blind raters scored the candidates on their response to: What are your proposals to improve healthcare access and affordability?


Beth Ellen Adubato

My answers to previous questions overlap here, so I will recap the proposals.

  1. Healthcare for all
  2. In the meantime, restore the ACA cuts (including cuts to rural health centers)
  3. Restore funding to Planned Parenthood health centers, where more than 1.1 million patients go for birth control, wellness visits, STI tests, and cancer screenings
  4. Allow the government to once-again negotiate with pharmaceutical companies

Brian Varela

First, I’ll fight to undo the damage from the One Big Beautiful Bill, which made some of the largest cuts to federal health programs in American history, all to fund tax breaks for billionaires. The law will put millions at risk of losing Medicaid coverage through burdensome work requirements and let enhanced ACA premium tax credits expire, causing premiums to double for working families. I’ll fight to restore and permanently extend those credits. I’ll also push to close the Medicaid coverage gap that leaves nearly 1.4 million Americans, 65 percent of them people of color, with no path to affordable coverage because their states refuse to expand Medicaid.

On healthcare access, I’ll champion the Save America’s Rural Hospitals Act to stop the wave of rural hospital closures devastating communities across America. More than 130 rural hospitals have shuttered since 2010, with hundreds more at risk. I support the Black Maternal Health Momnibus because we have the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy nation, and 80 percent of those deaths are preventable. We need to grow and diversify the healthcare workforce through legislation like the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act and investments in medical school capacity, nursing programs, and loan forgiveness for providers who serve underserved communities. We’re facing a projected shortage of 80,000-90,000 doctors and hundreds of thousands of nurses, we have to act now.

On prescription drugs, we need real reform, not marketing gimmicks like TrumpRx. That website is just a referral portal to pharmaceutical company discount programs that already existed, and most insured Americans won’t benefit because they already pay less through their plans. Meanwhile, the same administration weakened Medicare’s negotiating power by carving out protections for high-cost drugs. I’ll fight for legislation that expands Medicare’s negotiation from 20 to 50 drugs per year and extends those lower prices to everyone with private insurance, not just seniors. I’ll push to cap insulin at $35 a month for all Americans, not just Medicare beneficiaries, and crack down on pharmacy benefit manager middlemen who profit by driving up costs.

I run ten childcare centers and I see every day how crushing healthcare costs are for working families. Healthcare should be a right, and I’ll fight like hell to make sure it is.

Megan O’Rourke

I believe we have a broken healthcare system that needs an overhaul.  Step one is to extend ACA premium tax credits for a limited amount of time as a bridge to a single-payer system similar to a “Medicare-for-all” system.

Michael Roth

Healthcare costs are crushing New Jersey families, who pay more for premiums, prescriptions, and procedures than almost anywhere else in the country. Too many families delay care because they can’t afford it, too many seniors struggle to afford their medications, and too many small businesses can’t compete with rising healthcare costs. Our healthcare system is broken. While Republicans try to dismantle it completely, Democrats are just fighting for the status quo which does not work for people. We need fundamental, comprehensive reform that includes:

  • Ensuring healthcare is a human right, not a privilege of your job, income, or zip code, by guaranteeing affordable coverage through a public option and strong federal protections
  • Protecting Medicare and Medicaid from funding cuts
  • Lowering costs for families by allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, expanding ACA subsidies, and capping out-of-pocket costs
  • Expanding primary care, mental health treatment, and addiction services
  • Making breakthrough treatments like GLP-1s affordable and available for families who need them
  • Cracking down on Pharmacy Benefit Managers that drive up prescription drug costs
  • Never taking a dollar from any healthcare corporate PAC or lobby so that I work for the people rather than corporate interests

Rebecca Bennett

We need to stop all of the consolidation in the healthcare industry that is raising prices, undo the cuts to healthcare in OBBB, expand Rx negotiations, and fight to protect pre-existing conditions protections and stop Trump’s junk healthcare plans.

Tina Shah

As a doctor, I’ve seen firsthand how critical of a condition the United States healthcare system is in. And in Congress, my plan includes: 

  1. Reversing Trump’s Medicaid cuts to restore access to healthcare for those who need it most, including mothers, children, and seniors.
  2. Restoring the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits to lower health insurance premium costs.
  3. Protecting us from insurance companies who focus on profits over people: passing prior authorization reform at a federal level like I helped our legislators do in New Jersey in 2024
  4. Lowering prescription drug costs and expanding Medicare prescription drug negotiations for everyone so that no one has to choose between the medications they need to be healthy and buying groceries.
  5. Capping insurance co-pay and hidden fees for drugs, office visits, ER visits, non-elective surgeries and other services.