Sheldon Whitehouse
United States Senator for Rhode Island
Sheldon Whitehouse has made reforming our broken health care system a hallmark of his career. During his time as Rhode Island’s Attorney General he founded the Rhode Island Quality Institute, a collaborative effort between health care providers, insurers, and government that has pioneered efforts to expand the use of electronic medical records and improve the quality of care delivered across the state. In the Senate, he has established himself as a leader on health care delivery system reform and health information technology (HIT), working to secure new investments in HITs through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He has held hearings in the Special Committee on Aging about how we can improve care for patients with advanced illnesses. And he helped to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is now expanding access to health insurance for people across the country, while also making important changes to the ways we deliver and pay for care that will lead to lower costs and better health outcomes. Whitehouse has further called on the Obama Administration to set a cost-savings target for the delivery system reforms it is pursuing through the ACA.
A graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Sheldon served as Rhode Island’s Director of Business Regulation under Governor Sundlun before being recommended by Senator Pell and nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Rhode Island’s United States Attorney in 1994. He was elected Attorney General of Rhode Island in 1998, a position in which he served until 2003. On November 7, 2006, Rhode Islanders elected Sheldon to the United States Senate, where he is a member of the Budget Committee; the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW); the Judiciary Committee; the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; and the Special Committee on Aging. He is the ranking Democrat of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism and of the EPW Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife.