A Healthier Future for Long Island
Long Island families are one serious diagnosis away from financial disaster, and instead of fixing that, Andrew Garbarino voted to make it worse with massive federal cuts to healthcare in New York. I’ve spent my career protecting essential services and fighting to make government work for working families on the South Shore. In Congress, I’ll fight to make healthcare and retirement security affordable again—not gut them to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and give more power to giant healthcare conglomerates.
Every American should have access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. I believe we should give Americans the opportunity to buy into Medicare coverage—while making sure no one with strong private coverage they already like is forced to give it up.
The Policy Agenda I Support
Guarantee Healthcare for Every American — I support the goal of expanding Medicare, but I don't believe getting to universal healthcare means taking good coverage away from people who already have it. Union members have fought at the bargaining table for strong healthcare benefits, and millions of Americans have employer coverage they're happy with. We should let every American access Medicare and build a system that's so good and affordable that more families and employers choose it—not force people into it overnight. As we move toward universal Medicare coverage, people should continue to have the ability to purchase private supplemental insurance as is the norm in most industrialized nations.
Lowering the Cost of Healthcare and Prescription Drugs — Americans pay more for healthcare than people in any other industrialized nation, yet we don't get better health outcomes in return. That's because our healthcare system rewards monopoly power, middlemen, and corporate profits instead of patients. I believe we should learn from the best ideas that are working around the world and build an American healthcare system that delivers high-quality care at a price families can afford. The more Americans who participate in Medicare, the greater its purchasing power becomes. We should use that bargaining power to negotiate lower prices for American families—not protect pharmaceutical company profits.
Learn from what works: Adopt proven ideas from other industrialized countries that reduce costs, improve access, and deliver better outcomes while building a healthcare system that reflects American values.
Better drug prices, negotiated sooner: Don't make Medicare wait years before it can negotiate the price of expensive medications without competition.
Stop pharmaceutical patent games: Crack down on patent thickets, product hopping, pay-for-delay agreements, and other strategies designed primarily to keep cheaper generics and biosimilars off the market.
Take on PBMs and Prescription Drug Middlemen: The middlemen who negotiate prescription drug prices shouldn't make more money when your medicine gets more expensive.
Break the Healthcare Monopolies — America doesn't just have a healthcare coverage problem. We have a healthcare monopoly problem. No healthcare conglomerate should be able to own your insurance company, decide which drugs it will cover, own the middleman negotiating the price, steer you to the pharmacy it owns, buy your doctor's practice—and make money at every step.
Remove conflicts of interest: Use stronger antitrust enforcement and structural separation where giant healthcare conglomerates use ownership across insurance, PBMs, pharmacies, and healthcare providers to eliminate competition, steer patients toward their own businesses, and drive up costs.
Stop hospital and provider consolidation from driving up prices: Scrutinize hospital mergers and the acquisition of independent physician practices that reduce competition, while protecting community and safety-net hospitals that Long Islanders depend on.
Protect independent doctors and pharmacies: Stop dominant healthcare corporations from using their market power to squeeze independent providers out of business, leaving patients with fewer choices and higher costs.
Pay fairly for the care you actually receive: Expand appropriate site-neutral payments so patients and Medicare aren't charged substantially more for the same routine service simply because a hospital conglomerate bought the doctor's office or facility.
Put patients and doctors back in charge: Crack down on abusive prior authorization, corporate steering, and other practices that allow insurance companies and vertically integrated healthcare corporations to put their financial interests ahead of a patient's care.
Reverse Garbarino's Healthcare Cuts — Andrew Garbarino promised to protect Medicaid and then voted for legislation that cut healthcare and put coverage at risk for Long Islanders. I will fight to reverse those cuts and protect the healthcare families already depend on.
Reverse the Medicaid cuts: Restore federal Medicaid funding and protect coverage and access to care for seniors, people with disabilities, children, and working families who depend on the program.
Restore and protect New York's Essential Plan: Restore the federal funding cuts that devastated New York's Essential Plan and protect affordable healthcare for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers whose coverage was put at risk.
Make ACA coverage affordable again: Restore enhanced ACA premium tax credits so Long Island families buying their own insurance aren't hit with dramatically higher monthly premiums.
Protect Long Island hospitals and community health centers: Reverse cuts that shift billions in costs onto New York's healthcare system, threatening hospitals, community health centers, providers, and the patients they serve.
Stop pushing the cost of the uninsured onto everyone else: When people lose coverage, they don't stop getting sick. They end up seeking more expensive care in emergency rooms, leaving hospitals and insured families to absorb the cost. Protecting coverage helps keep costs down for everyone and keeps all our costs from going up.
My Credibility on Healthcare
As Suffolk County Executive, I had firsthand responsibility for a county government that provided primary care and essential health services to residents, including people who depended on the public healthcare safety net. He understands that when Washington cuts Medicaid and safety-net healthcare funding, those aren't numbers on a spreadsheet—they mean fewer resources for local health centers, hospitals, doctors and the patients who depend on them.
As Chairman of the Suffolk County Water Authority, I took responsibility for one of Long Island's most fundamental public health necessities: safe, affordable drinking water from our sole-source aquifer. He pushed for greater transparency and accountability because he believes essential services should serve the public—not entrenched interests.
I understand that public health is bigger than what happens in a doctor's office. It's the water we drink, whether we can afford our medicine, whether we can see a doctor when we're sick, and whether healthcare actually reaches people instead of simply being promised to them.
The Contrast with Garbarino Who Lied to Us
Andrew Garbarino promised to protect Medicaid—and then voted to cut it. In 2025, Garbarino joined other Republicans in warning congressional leadership that he could not support legislation that reduced Medicaid coverage for vulnerable Americans. Then Garbarino turned around and voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, betraying his fellow New Yorkers.
The consequences for New York are enormous: state officials have projected roughly $13 billion in annual damage to New York's healthcare system and 1.5 million New Yorkers ultimately losing insurance coverage as the law's provisions take effect. Andrew Garbarino has also accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Pharma while Long Island families struggle with prescription drug prices that just keep going up. He’s perfectly fine with the status quo and letting corporations record record profits while working families struggle with the impossible choice of buying either food or medicine.