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Patricia McGovern

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Biography

Patricia McGovern is a former Massachusetts State Senator and currently the General Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate and Community Affairs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

McGovern has also served as Executive Vice President for External Affairs at CareGroup Healthcare System and practiced law at the Boston law firm of Goulston & Storrs. In addition, she was the Executive Director of the Governor’s Committee on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice in the Executive Office of Public Safety, and has participated in a number of Blue Ribbon Committees and Commissions, including most recently the Transportation Finance Commission.

McGovern served in the Massachusetts Senate for 12 years and was the first woman to chair the powerful Massachusetts Senate Committee on Ways and Means. While the Chair of that Committee McGovern was the principal architect of the first serious effort in Massachusetts to enact a universal health insurance law. Under her stewardship, such a law was enacted in 1990 -- with the controversial inclusion of a sales tax on services -- but the law was never implemented by the newly elected Governor of the Commonwealth, the Republican William Weld. However, Michael Dukakis used the enactment universal health care on the campaign trail in his run for the U.S. Presidency, notwithstanding that McGovern had done most of the hard lifting in getting the law enacted. This may parallel former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's use of the recently enacted Universal Health provisions in Massachusetts -- this time with the controversial mandate that all citizens of the Commonwealth must purchase health insurance or be fined -- in his own quest for the Presidency.