Representative Marie Hopkins

A lot of people in Rhode Island want to "fix" healthcare. Very few have the clinical background to actually do it—and that gap has proven to be part of the problem.

Without:
• Clinical medical training
• Pharmacology or pathophysiology
• Diagnosis and treatment of physical disease
• Primary care workflows, billing, or systems of care
• Direct experience with the medical model of health integration, primary care operations, medical necessity, integrated care models, or the clinical realities of delivering care inside medical or even home settings...

Well-meaning viewpoints can offer informed opinions from law, education, psychology, social work, public policy, or even just advocacy. Those perspectives are truly valuable-- but-- They simply cannot be the ones holding the scalpel when the patient is this far gone.

Rhode Island healthcare is past the point of dying. It needs resuscitation, it is fast approaching a full autopsy.

As a nurse and legislator, I’m making real healthcare reform a central pillar of my efforts over the next two years. I welcome anyone ready to do the hard, unglamorous work of fixing the actual system. I'm not willing to settle for Band-Aids. This is serious medicine at this point-- and there's nothing pretty about that.

If I sound alarmed, it's because I am. This issue needs to be central in our state and it needs to be centralized immediately. Further, it needs to be dealt with through the lens of actual practitioners.

I will continue to bring the voices of real Primary Care doctors/providers to the table. Rhode Island’s healthcare system is on life support: The cure is the same as it always is: put the doctors in charge of treating it.

Sleep is over-rated. Books are not highly enough rated. This has been my night watch for the last month plus. Next!

I periodically complain about the fact that Congress is so busy infighting on social issues that they're not getting the actual work of the people done. We have not had decent consumer protection laws dealt with in a very long time!

Companies are moving more and more to the use of AI, chatbots, apps, etc. and individuals have no recourse of action when they have a customer service issue with these giant multinational corporations.

Many states are instituting right to a human laws bc Congress has not. I believe the lack of human CS has a tremendous impact on senior citizens... but as you can see from this video, the impact is far more widespread.

I have cited other examples in the past; this is work that needs to be done. We are becoming powerless against these giant Corporations. It extends to Telcom, it extends to banking, it extends to medical records access. It definately extends to social media. It is hitting us in every echelon of our daily tasks. Consumer protection law is good non-partisan work that Congress should focus on -- it would unify and protect the American people.

@SpeakerJohnson @HouseGOP
@HouseDemocrats @SenateGOP @SenateDems DO YOUR JOB.

Article notes that most people do not feel the state is headed in the right direction. Yet, rather than turn in a new direction, they've chosen more of the same.

Look, folks, if you just don't like a certain restaurant, and every item on the menu has left a bad taste in your mouth... you should try a new restaurant, you don't keep going back for the same ingredients.

I also note that we are driving further left because the far left is the most actioned and organized. Good on them. The moderates and those on the right are complacent. Case in point:

There is a Facebook post with 17,000 members who joined the group to oppose RI energy costs... recently the group organizers tried to organize a rally to bring attention to the problem. Ten people showed up to the rally. Ten, of of 17,000. That's complacency.

So-- We get more of the same.

I'm okay with it if they are. I have work to do... but the complaints of the Rhode Island electorate are beginning to sound like the boy who cried wolf. Couch and internet slactivism (armchair quarterbacking your complaints) does nothing to change the outcome of the game.

Onward, Rhode Island. Our motto is "hope."

Islam has a population: the ummah. It has a constitution: Sharia. It has courts, criminal law, family law, taxation, rules for minorities, doctrines of war and peace, and a foreign-policy framework governing relations between the land of Islam and the lands outside it.

That is a political framework. Yes, it is based upon theological beliefs, but that does not make it a Religion. It is a political system under religious law or divine authority. The word for this is theocracy.

I don't see how mind shaped theocratically can also be shaped democratically. These are ideologically contradictory concepts. Democracy is rule according to collective will. Theocracy is adherence to God's law. Democracy is a subset of humanistic thought, theocracy is in accordance with God's will. American democracy demands separation of church and state, Islam commands the church is the state.

They simply can't be forced into the same space, as they are diametrically opposed.