Summary
Current Position: Board Member, Three Rivers Healthy Families Advisory Board
Affiliation: Democrat
Candidate: 2019 State Delegate
Former Position: Board Member, Gloucester County Public Library Board of Trustees from 2010 – 2019
OnAir Post: Ella Webster
About
Source: Campaign page
Dr. Webster has lived in Gloucester, Virginia since 2006. Her first job out of training was with the Gloucester-Mathews Free Clinic, from where she was recruited to the Virginia Department of Health. Since 2010 she has worked for Health Districts all over the Eastern Region, she is hoping to collect the whole set.
Dr. Webster served as a United States Peace Corps Maternal Child Health Volunteer in the Central African Republic for two years in the 1990s after receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Drew University.
She then returned to Maine, and supported herself for three years as a waitress while taking classes at the University of Southern Maine. This experience gave her a deep appreciation for the challenges and accomplishments of working people, and limited patience for poverty-shaming. During this time she also took care of people dying of AIDS in the year before and the year after treatment became available. She is perplexed that HIV continues to be such an issue and it is one of the reasons she is passionate about universal healthcare because treatment is prevention.
After receiving her Doctorate in Medicine from Dartmouth Medical School she moved “back” to Virginia, lived in Richmond for three years, where she worked on Maternal and Child Mortality projects and ultimately moved to Gloucester.
Experience
Education
- Doctorate of Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School
Contact
Email:
- Campaign – ella4the98th@gmail.com
Offices
Ella 4 the 98th
PO BOX 522
Hayes, VA 23072
Phone: 804-505-4898
Politics
Source: none
Issues
Democracy
Non-partisan redistricting – OneVirginia2020 has a reasonable plan. It isn’t the one I would have created, but it’s done, it will work well enough and it’s passed the GA once, I will vote for it if elected.
End routine disenfranchisement – I was born in Vermont and raised in Maine, the two states that practice NO disenfranchisement for felony convictions. I remain horrified that we count their bodies towards representation but deny them the vote. Here is a short explainer on the subject. It would be a start to have automatic restoration of the right to vote upon release from jail, AND enfranchising individuals who have moved here from more restrictive states. eople on pre-triaPl detention and jailed for misdemeanors have the legal right to vote. Lets have voter registration and civic education in jail. Might help with recidivism.
Accessible Voting – Vote by mail, early voting, automatic registration, repeal ID laws, ranked choice voting. I would pass a law allowing localities to use universal vote by mail if they wanted (with allowed in person at the office), and a law requiring ranked choice voting in any state run primary with 3 or more candidates. Ease into both.
Education
Smaller Classes
The best data there is shows that classes between 13 and 17 students per teacher can play a large role in closing the gaps in education disparity. It makes the biggest difference to the students who need it the most. We need to reform school funding statewide, but it is important to set out the goals. It’s not fancy schools (although those are nice) it’s enough teachers…
Higher Teacher Pay
In 2010 two Princeton scientists released a study that showed an increase in happiness with an increase in income up to the level of $75,000*. After that, more money didn’t buy more happiness. Teachers, who we entrust with the future of our nation, make an average of $65,300 with their masters.
Free Meals for all Students
The way people eat has changed, and whether or not I approve of it, I want children to be well nourished and unashamed at school. I support free, healthy, breakfast and lunch for all students, and teachers if they eat with the students.
Other School Priorities
Get rid of the SoLs, NOW. Stop paying Pearson one red cent.
Let principals and teachers select their evaluation tools.
Evaluate students only to establish who needs help at the inflection points, third and ninth grades.
Give greater autonomy to principals, and less to districts.
Evidence based science education starting in kindergarten.
School gardens at every school that are part of the meals, small animal husbandry, and large where appropriate.
Health Care
I’m tired of waiting for the federal Government to get its act together. With Medicaid expansion, Virginia has a small enough number of uninsured that we should be able to come up with a solution as a state.
Drug prices are nuts, I’m linking to a website run by a group of drug manufacturers, so keep that in mind as you read it. Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) are only part of why medication costs to the CONSUMER are high and unpredictable. The Commonwealth can and should act. My proposal is a single formulary, administered by the Commonwealth. Possibly not something that would be needed permanently, but healthcare is not a free market and right now everyone except the insurance companies and the PBMs are getting hosed.
PBMs are running the independent pharmacies out of business. Part of the goal of a state formulary, would be protecting independent pharmacists from these predatory practices. Rural areas especially need independents. When we needed help at the free clinic, we didn’t go to CVS or RiteAid, we went to Gloucester Pharmacy. I want to keep my opponent in business, just not in the General Assembly.
The end goal should be healthcare free at the point of service. No deductibles, no co-pays. Ask the Canadians, the UK, Australia, NZ, they all think we’re insane.
Drugs aren’t included in that in some systems, they are in others.
Germany and/or Switzerland may have the system that is the best model for us, but they both involve more cost-sharing at the point of use than the others. (They also have much higher minimum wages, think about that before you jump this way.)
Infrastructure
Conversion of the public monies into private profit is the besetting governmental sin of our time.
Rural broadband is going to take public investment in publicly owned infrastructure. We need to put conduit in as we repair roads. We need public fiber to communities and then let small businesses take it the last mile. The cost of entry into the ISP business has risen so high we have defacto monopolies. Let’s lower that. Usage fees from the ISPs can recoup the cost and keep the program going.
Roads (and bridges), instead of frittering away that $551.9 million surplus on small tax refunds, we could have used it as a capital fund for the roads. Using years of plenty to buttress against lean years is economic management so old it’s biblical, but the GOP can’t manage it. We’ve gotten behind, we need to catch up and get ahead before the next lean time.
