Forget I-95, Gov. Shapiro should slash the bureaucracy for everybody

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s PR people clearly have a new strategy. After the barrage of negative headlines questioning his effectiveness as a politician — after threatening to veto his own priority on Lifeline Scholarships and causing the current budget impasse — they are refocusing attention firmly on his triumphs, namely reopening I-95.

Shapiro did a fine job on I-95. We know because he won’t stop telling us. His most recent victory lap came via a Washington Post op-ed seeking to burnish his reputation as a strong leader and claiming he “slashed bureaucracy.”

But the PR strategy backfired when the executive director of Shapiro’s Advisory Commission for Next Generation Engagement made a cringe-worthy video of herself putting on makeup while extolling the virtues and accomplishments of her boss.

So here’s my advice for the governor: Instead of having staff post Trump-esque vanity videos of your accomplishments, why not apply the principles you’re bragging about and slash bureaucracy for everybody?

And it shouldn’t just be for road building, but across all departments — especially health care.

A few weeks ago, my friend April rang me with awful news. Her cancer is back worse than before.

I’ve written in these pages before about April Hynes. During COVID-19, she was diagnosed with stage 4, triple-negative metastatic breast cancer. To get the treatment she needed in 2020, April required and received a state waiver for a telemedicine appointment at the esteemed Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York that gave her a second opinion on her treatment options, allowing her to stay alive for the last three years — even going for months with “no evidence of disease,” the precursor to being in remission.

Thank goodness so many restrictions were waived, and we were able to get her an emergency exemption. But neither former Gov. Tom Wolf nor Shapiro has made telemedicine waivers permanent. Most of the waivers expired at the end of October 2022.

At the height of the pandemic, lawmakers and Shapiro’s predecessor extended active waivers on hundreds of health-care regulations, including loosening restrictions on telehealth. Telehealth exploded during the pandemic. In Pennsylvania, Penn Medicine hosted more than a million telemedicine visits during the first year of the pandemic — a 9,000% increase from the year prior.

April is still having to fight her way through Pennsylvania’s red tape simply to access the medical care that she desperately needs. Once again, she needs a second opinion at Sloan Kettering and is too sick to travel there in person.

This time, there are no waivers for her to get the second opinion. I called the office of her state representative, Perry Warren, to ask if they could help her. No, I was told. They didn’t even know what I was talking about.

And so, April has still not started chemo. She still is desperate for that second opinion at Sloan Kettering. If she starts chemo before getting one, she could be barred from accessing any clinical trials that might provide better treatment.

If Shapiro recognizes that bureaucracy is a problem for roads, then he should refocus on alleviating the burdensome rules and regulations that slow down everything necessary for the health, safety, and well-being of all Pennsylvanians. We don’t need excessive rules and regulations on our roads or for our health care.

While Shapiro focuses on optics, Pennsylvanians need an effective leader — one who will remove the bureaucratic hurdles and red tape preventing them from protecting their lives and livelihoods.

If he can do it for a highway bridge, why not for the rest of us?

During his campaign, Shapiro promised he would “expand telehealth services.” Cutting the red tape for April won’t garner the press coverage the I-95 reopening did — but it could save a life.