Make Ohio More Affordable for Families

Lower the cost of raising a family, bring healthcare within reach, and make adoption support work when families actually need it.

I have three children. I buy groceries, pay medical bills, arrange childcare, and watch the same household costs climb as everyone else. When childcare approaches the cost of a mortgage payment, having a baby can leave a family owing thousands of dollars, and needed appointments are booked months out, affordability becomes an economic-development problem.

Businesses cannot grow if workers cannot afford to live nearby, care for their children, or take time away from work when a baby is born or a parent becomes seriously ill. Family policy and economic policy are the same conversation.

End the maternity deductible

Having a baby should not begin with a family owing thousands of dollars before insurance meaningfully helps.

I support an Ohio Birth-Cost Benefit that covers ordinary deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance for prenatal care, delivery, and postpartum care. It should work as a clearly defined secondary benefit, paying eligible cost-sharing directly rather than sending families into a new reimbursement maze.

The program must include:

A clear annual appropriation and per-birth limit.
Independent actuarial review before expansion.
Protection against surprise billing and inflated charges.
Simple coordination with employer coverage, individual insurance, and Medicaid.
Public reporting on births covered, average assistance, administrative cost, and health outcomes.

The first promise is straightforward: no family should face a large maternity deductible simply because they chose to have a child.

Pass paid family and medical leave

Parents should not have to choose between bonding with a new child and keeping the lights on. Workers should not lose their livelihood because a spouse, child, or aging parent becomes seriously ill.

Ohio already has a bipartisan starting point. Senate Bill 396 would create a family and medical leave insurance program offering eligible workers up to fourteen weeks of paid leave. The proposal uses a payroll contribution shared by workers and employers, exempts employers with fewer than fifteen employees from the employer contribution, and still covers their workers.

I support moving that bill forward and improving it through an open fiscal review. The final program should:

Cover birth, adoption, personal medical needs, and care for a seriously ill family member.
Use progressive wage replacement so lower-income workers can actually afford to take leave.
Let employers use an equal or better private plan.
Keep reporting and administration simple for small businesses.
Publish premium assumptions, administrative costs, and long-term solvency projections.
Require periodic independent actuarial review comparing projected premiums, claims, reserves, and administrative costs with actual results.
Do not expand benefits without identifying sustainable recurring funding.

Before final passage, lawmakers and the public should be able to see the expected premium impact, reserve assumptions, and long-term solvency of the program. If those assumptions prove wrong, adjustments should be made transparently rather than allowing an unfunded obligation to grow quietly.

We do not need another vague promise to support parents. We have a bipartisan bill on the table. We should finish the work.

Expand childcare supply without lowering safety standards

Childcare is workforce infrastructure. Ohio should review rules that unnecessarily prevent responsible providers from opening or expanding, improve the speed and consistency of inspections, and strengthen partnerships among providers, employers, schools, and community organizations.

The goal is not lower standards. It is more safe options, clear application requirements, reasonable inspection timelines, and a system that helps good providers comply instead of leaving them in bureaucratic limbo.

Make adoption assistance available when the bills are due

My family has been through complex medical situations and the adoption process. Those experiences showed me just how quickly families can run into legal, financial, and bureaucratic delays at the exact moment they need clarity and support. That is why I support practical steps like an adoption bridge loan to help with timing gaps and reduce unnecessary barriers so kids can reach permanent homes sooner.

Home studies, agency fees, legal costs, medical expenses, and travel can come due long before a family receives public assistance.

Ohio recognized that problem and created Family Forward, a linked-deposit program intended to support reduced-interest adoption loans of up to $50,000. But the state never made the product meaningfully available. The Treasurer's January 2026 portfolio report showed only eleven active Family Forward deposits totaling $207,727.66, all through three credit unions. The official program page now says it has been discontinued, even though the adoption linked-deposit law remains on the books.

A family benefit that exists only in the Revised Code is not a family benefit.

Meanwhile, Ohio's Adoption Grant provides $10,000 for a conventional adoption, $15,000 when an eligible foster caregiver adopts, and $20,000 for an eligible adoption of a child with special needs. That is meaningful help, but families generally apply after the adoption is finalized. The federal adoption credit also arrives later, and its nonrefundable portion may take up to five years to use.

I would rebuild Family Forward as a genuine statewide bridge:

Competitively select at least one bank or credit union able to serve families statewide.
Offer an interest-free bridge, up to the likely Ohio Adoption Grant amount, for families with an approved home study and a qualifying adoption in progress.
Let a family voluntarily direct its grant toward the loan principal after finalization.
Preserve reduced-rate financing above the bridge amount, up to the program's existing $50,000 ceiling.
Create a limited loan-loss reserve and pay reasonable servicing costs so lenders have a reason to offer this specialized product.
Provide payment pauses and fair hardship terms when a placement unexpectedly fails.
Publish participating lenders, applications, approval times, rates, geographic access, and defaults every year.

The grant would still have to be earned under Ohio law. The state should not pretend every placement is guaranteed to finalize. But it can reserve funds for an approved bridge, reduce lender risk, and ensure that a disrupted placement does not become a financial catastrophe.

If Ohio says adoption should be a real option, help must be available when the agency, attorney, and travel bills are due, not months or years afterward.

Bring healthcare within reach: learn here, serve here

Healthcare access is not only about the price of an appointment. In too many communities, the appointment is not available at all. Ohio can educate excellent physicians and still leave patients driving long distances or waiting months for primary care, maternity care, psychiatry, and other needed specialties.

Ohio already repays some educational loans for physicians who agree to practice in designated shortage areas. I support preserving that route while adding an upfront Ohio Medical Service Scholarship so students can make the commitment before the debt piles up.

The scholarship would:

Pay a defined portion of tuition directly to an accredited Ohio medical or osteopathic school.
Require one year of qualifying Ohio service for each school year funded, up to four years.
Use existing federal and state shortage designations rather than creating a political map.
Match each participant to a specialty the Ohio Department of Health identifies as needed in that area.
Require participating physicians to accept Medicare and Medicaid and maintain meaningful appointment availability for those patients.
Preserve Ohio's existing expectation that care be provided without regard to a patient's ability to pay.
Keep the current loan-repayment option for clinicians who have already completed training, so Ohio can recruit doctors now while scholarships build the future workforce.

Doctors would earn the scholarship one service year at a time. If someone leaves early, only the unearned portion would become ordinary educational debt. Reasonable hardship protections would cover disability, death, military activation, or the state's failure to offer a qualifying placement.

The program should begin with a capped number of competitive scholarships, publish placement and retention results, and expand only when the evidence shows it is putting doctors where patients need them.

Make healthcare prices understandable

Patients and employers deserve to know what care will cost before a bill arrives. I support stronger enforcement of price-transparency rules, plain-language benefit information, more competition, and fewer administrative barriers that add cost without improving care.

Every new state healthcare program should have to publish administrative costs and patient outcomes. Good intentions are not enough. Policy has to work.

Respect difficult medical decisions

I do not believe abortion should be treated casually, and I understand the love for children that motivates many pro-life Ohioans. But love is a moral instinct, not a complete public policy.

My family has faced difficult fertility and pregnancy complications. Those experiences taught me that politicians cannot write one simple rule for every medical situation a family may face.

Ohio voters placed reproductive decision-making protections in the state constitution. I will respect both the text and the voters who adopted it. I support access to contraception, fertility treatment, IVF, miscarriage care, and constitutionally protected abortion care. I oppose criminal penalties aimed at women for pregnancy outcomes and government interference between a patient and a qualified medical professional during a crisis.

I also oppose House Bill 754, which would require registration of all fetal deaths and a state certificate after detection of a fetal heartbeat. I am pro-family, but I am not for turning pregnancy and miscarriage into a government paperwork and surveillance regime.

Families need lower costs, better care, privacy, and compassion, not another registry.