• Enacted one of the best and most comprehensive Children’s Health programs in the nation, guaranteeing that all kids have health care, with a medical home and other services,
regardless of income or background.

• Transformed home care for tens of thousands of elderly and disabled people,
greatly increasing training, wages, and benefits for home care workers,
and thereby improving the quality of care for our most vulnerable citizens.

• Enacted mental health parity, requiring insurance plans to include treatment
for mental illness, just like any physical illness.

• Increased mental health funding significantly, back-filling federal budget cuts
and giving new tools for local communities to better serve the mentally-ill.

• Created a prescription drug buyer’s consortium, using the state’s purchasing power
to save tens of millions of dollars every year for individuals and health care plans.

• Enacted one of the best Patient’s Bill of Rights in the nation,
ensuring that health care decisions are more in the hands of patients and their doctors, thereby fostering better care and patient safety.

• Dedicated significant revenues to tobacco prevention, helping reduce the % of smokers
to a historic low, and making Washington state one of the top national leaders in this regard.

• Improved hospital safety, enacting legislation to help prevent staff injuries
caused by needle sticks, patient lifting, and other factors.

• Doubled funding for the state’s Housing Trust Fund to $200 million,
building tens of thousands of new homes for low-income people,
including the elderly, disabled, homeless, farm workers, and low-wage workers.

• Created the Home Security Fund and the Washington Families Fund,
providing ongoing services to tens of thousands of poor people, particularly homeless families
as well as individuals, and thereby helping break the cycle of poverty.

• Extended unemployment insurance benefits for victims of domestic violence.

• Reformed foster care in the state, by providing much greater funding and better oversight
of the placements and services for children in foster care.

Education, Health Care and Social Security, Jobs, Environment, Reform