Marx is the ‘Healthcare Advocate Old Lyme Needs’

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I am enthusiastically supporting Martha Marx in her bid to replace Paul Formica as State Senator for District 20. I am impressed by her commitment to representing everyone, not just the wealthy and privileged few whom her opponent, Paul Formica, is primarily interested in serving and making richer. This has been made abundantly clear to me in recent years through personal experience. 

Since 2015, I have lived in a senior community in Old Lyme, where 70% of the residents are enrolled in Connecticut’s Medicare Savings Program, which helps pay Medicare Part B premiums, deductibles, co-insurance and prescription drug costs for low-income seniors. Funded by Medicaid, this life-saving program is a godsend for seniors like my neighbors who live on fixed incomes. Without the crucial financial help it provides them, many would no longer be able to afford their medications or see their physicians.

During the last two budget cycles, State Senator Paul Formica has supported changing the Medicare Savings Program’s eligibility requirements for enrollment in order to make it impossible for tens of thousands of current enrollees to remain in the program. Fortunately, due to massive constituent protest across the state, his efforts have been unsuccessful and revealed that Formica, like his Republican cohorts in Washington, is only interested in exercising fiscal restraint when it comes to slashing funding for well-established and popular healthcare programs.

Along with several CT healthcare advocacy groups, I have worked to help preserve the Medicare Savings Program in its present form by regularly calling and writing to many of the senators and representatives in Hartford who determine how each new budget will be structured. This has included the members of the Appropriations Committee, on which Formica serves. However, he has consistently ignored and not returned my calls and emails, making it clear that his priorities exclude assisting constituents who are not affluent or successful business owners. 

Instead, as revealed in last week’s debate at the Garde Arts Center between Formica and Martha Marx, he supports the current president and opposes even raising the minimum wage. On the other hand, Ms. Marx, as a practicing nurse and healthcare advocate, cares deeply about working people and the most vulnerable among us, and will fight to protect them. 

At a time when seniors currently enrolled in the Medicare Savings Program are at highest risk of contracting COVID-19 and need the program more than ever, it makes no sense to re-elect someone like Formica who wants to take it away from them. So I urge you to elect Democrat Martha Marx as District 20’s new State Senator on November 3rd, since many lives may depend on it. 

Will Holub
Old Lyme, CT