Candidate for Colorado State Senate - District 31 in 2020 Colorado General Election.
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Get StartedThere is perhaps no other issue that is as emotional as the debate over the “right to life” and the “right to choose”. While rarely stated, I believe that this is a human rights issue, not simply a women’s rights issue. A man is involved at conception, planned or unplanned. Sadly, many of those men choose to not be a part of the woman’s pregnancy or raising the child leading to a “stigma of unwed motherhood”. And that is one of the reasons cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v Wade in support of their decision,. Learn more
Beyond using the courts to protect our citizens, I believe that the State of Colorado must respect YOUR individual right to decide how YOU desire to protect yourself and your loved ones. If you want to rely on the local police, that is your decision. If you want to take self-defense classes, that is your decision. If you want to protect yourself with a gun, that is your decision. The State does not place restrictions on your ability to call the police or take a class. It should not place artificial restrictions on your ability to own or carry a gun. Criminals and killers will do what they want regardless of the law (that is why they are criminals!). In fact, all of the above-mentioned tragedies took place in “gun free” zones. I will fight for your right to do what YOU believe appropriate to protect yourself and your loved ones from these criminals. Learn more
The leadership of the individual colleges and universities must aggressively control their own budgets to reign in, and ideally lower, the cost of their educational programs. While the State government may have limited direct impact on these costs, the State certainly possesses the power to use the level of the College Opportunity Fund to incentivize the individual institutions to bring their costs under control. Learn more
I believe we must commit to the importance of educating the children of Colorado and empowering parents to determine what educational model and environment will be most effective for their children. Parents should have full educational choice that is financially supported by the State of Colorado regardless of their choice. Learn more
The State should be supportive of any and all efforts by our citizens to reduce carbon emissions or otherwise improve our environment. Rather than the State of Colorado picking winners and losers, overriding the will of the people to push their personal agenda as they have done with SB 19-181, subjecting our citizens to the dictates of California in telling us what car to drive, and mandating new rules with incentives that benefit the well to do at the expense of those who are not as well off, I want to empower all of our businesses and our citizens to come up with creative solutions to help address this problem while also supporting the growth of our economy. The power of 5 million Coloradans working together is far greater than our State government by itself. Learn more
The recently passed Red Flag law, while well intentioned, will have minimal effect on potential murders or other violent crimes because it focuses on a single weapon rather than the true “something”. We must address the individual. If there is a legitimate concern about an individual being dangerous to themselves or others, then the individual needs to be subject to court ordered evaluation and treatment, including in-patient evaluation if the threat is considered imminent. This evaluation must address not only potential mental health issues, but also substance abuse issues. Simply taking away a gun still leaves knives in the kitchen, a baseball bat in the closet, a tire iron in the trunk, and even the car in the garage as potential weapons that can be used to commit wide scale violence and murder of innocent persons. Learn more
Review the level of services that are allowed to be provided by various levels of professional certification with the goal to allow lower levels of trained and certified medical professionals to provide services at a lower cost if they can do so safely and within the level of their training. Learn more
Institute tort reform to lower the cost of settlements and liability insurance premiums. Providers, facilities and insurance companies do not ultimately pay either the insurance premiums or the settlements. These “costs of doing business” are passed along to patients resulting in higher cost of health care. Learn more
Reduce the cost of hospital stays by eliminating the hidden Hospital Provider Fee and any additional fees or taxes that are imposed on health care providers and facilities outside of normal income taxes. These fees and taxes are passed along to patients, thereby increasing the cost of health care and health insurance. Learn more
Mental illness among our fellow Coloradans is a concern for all – from the impact on our friends and family members, to the impact it has on the homeless, and to the contribution it has to increased violence against our citizens. The vast majority of individuals suffering from mental illness will never become violent, and in fact are much more likely to be victims of violence. The mass-scale deinstitutionalization of the seriously mental ill that began in the 1970’s has resulted in these individuals being “reinstitutionalized” in jails and prisons. The wide spread chronic homelessness that we now see throughout Denver and the metro area was scarcely heard of prior to this deinstitutionalization. Learn more
To avoid surprising patients with uncovered, out of network charges, require that every provider who works in a medical facility, such as a hospital, either participate in the insurance networks that the facility participates in or provide an equivalent in-network pricing for their services. In many cases, patients may not even have any say in whether or not that particular provider treated them, yet the patient later receives a large bill for out of network charges. Learn more
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