I have long advocated for health care legislation that makes universal, affordable care a reality. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010, marked the biggest step forward in US health care in decades: tens of millions of uninsured Americans received coverage for the first time. Insurance companies had to accept applicants for health coverage, regardless of preexisting conditions, and they could not charge women more for the same coverage, as had been common practice. More recently, Virginia’s Medicaid expansion, enacted by Democrats in the General Assembly, brought health care coverage to hundreds of thousands of Virginians. 

As a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, which has jurisdiction over health care, I am at the heart of the fight to build on that progress and make affordable, accessible health care fully universal. I introduced the Choose Medicare Act to do just that, and am a proud co-sponsor of Medicare for All. I have also championed legislation to lower prescription drug costs and fought as a member of the House Science Committee to ensure that public health measures are based on sound science.

Mental health has been an area of particular focus for my work in Congress, where I lead the House Mental Health Caucus, with a particular legislative focus on reducing the high instance of suicides, which claims tens of thousands of American lives each year. I helped establish 9-8-8 as the 3-digit suicide prevention lifeline phone number and enact legislation to raise awareness about this lifesaving resource. I have introduced the Barriers to Suicide Act to support nets and barriers on bridges to reduce suicide by jumping as well as the Peer to Peer Mental Health Support Act, in which mental health professionals train students in middle schools and high schools to provide mental health education and peer support to their fellow students so they have strategies to be healthy as well as how to access resources and help in a time of crisis.

Unfortunately, the return of Donald Trump to the White House has been a disaster for the U.S. health care system. Republicans passed legislation in the summer of 2025 that made the biggest health care cuts in American history, including nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. These cuts will be particularly devastating to rural communities, but people all over the country are already seeing skyrocketing health costs and, in many cases, finding that they simply cannot afford coverage at all. Additionally, Trump appointed vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. health system. Kennedy has surrounded himself with a team of quacks, kooks, and loons who are endangering the American public by gutting public health measures and weakening public guidance and support for vaccines, which have saved millions of lives. I have fought these steps with my vote and my voice and am focused on helping build support in Congress and across the country to fight back and undo these terrible actions that will make Americans less healthy.