To the editor:

After reading recent letters, I felt compelled to share an experience with Representative Knight of District 67. 

I moved my family to RI 23 years ago and to Barrington 12 years ago. I have owned two RI businesses; my chiropractic group practice and a property rental business. At this point our practice has grown to 4 full time employees and 4 part time staff. 

In December of 2021, I requested an application to join the RI Veterans Administration (VA) as a provider. We were told it would take 1-2 months to get an application. Optum, the gatekeeper for the VA (wholly owned subsidiary of United Health Care) gave varied reasons for the application delay (the network is temporarily closed, they’re reworking the application, focusing on credentialing chiropractors in the Midwest and not the Northeast). Meanwhile another colleague applied in May of 2022 and was approved within 2 months. I figured it was UHC blocking my practice, because I was not a provider for them, my colleague was. After discovering this, I decided to reach out to Representative Knight.

I sent my first email to Representative Knight on August 18th 2022. He responded 4 days later. We had one more email and phone call exchange, so he could understand the problem clearly. He then put me in contact with staff at Congressman Cicilline’s office. They contacted me in late August, and after a couple of email exchanges, said they would reach out to both the VA and Optum to start to resolve this matter. To make a long story short, I got three emails in my inbox from Optum on 9-30-22. They were applications for all three chiropractors in my practice to join the VA. We will be handling this in the next two weeks and should be providers for the (VA) by January 2023. Ultimately, Rep Knight got done in six weeks, what I couldn’t get done in 7 months. 

I am grateful for the professionalism as well as concern Rep Knight showed to make this happen. He was concerned about my small business, but more importantly the veterans that were having to pay out of pocket for needed care that should now be covered by the VA.  Veterans sacrifice enough as it is. I know that Rep Knight is a veteran and cares deeply about veteran issues, but his care, compassion and professionalism are what I admire most. His actions, like this one, which are often quiet in nature, have meaningful impacts on our entire community. This reminds me of what the Jesuits taught me in my youth; ‘service is rooted in justice and love’.

As a constituent, father, physician and small business owner as well as the reasons above, I encourage everyone reading this to support Representative Knight for District 67.

Paul J O’Brien Jr 

Barrington