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September 18, 2024

Lamont nominates Holt as the new state healthcare advocate

Contributed Kathleen Holt.

Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday nominated Kathleen Holt of Mansfield to serve as the state’s next healthcare advocate.

Holt will begin serving in the role on an interim basis beginning Sept. 30. Shel succeeds Ted Doolittle, who stepped down from the post last year to accept an appointment as a federal immigration judge. 

Sean King, the general counsel for the Office of the Healthcare Advocate, has been serving as acting healthcare advocate since Doolittle's departure.

The healthcare advocate heads the Office of the Healthcare Advocate, a state agency that provides free legal services, advice and support to families and businesses in the state facing health insurance claim denials or other challenges with their public or private health coverage. 

Holt most recently has served since 2014 as the associate director for the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that works to advance access to comprehensive Medicare coverage, health equity and quality healthcare for older people and people with disabilities. 

Her nomination was recommended by the Healthcare Advocate Advisory Committee, made up of the appointees of bipartisan legislative leaders. The committee recently completed a statutorily required process to search for and evaluate candidates who could be nominated to the position, and then provided the governor with a list.

Holt, who was raised in Newtown, began her career working with Cigna in Bloomfield, where she developed insurance claim process improvement strategies. After earning an MBA in healthcare management from the University of Connecticut, she worked as a hospital administrator, first at New Britain Memorial Hospital and then at Northwest Hospital in Seattle.

She earned a law degree from Seattle University School of Law in 1993, after which she became a special assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Seattle. In that position, she authored health law opinions, litigated in federal court, and served as an in-house attorney for administrative law judges.

In 1997 — after the birth of her second child, who was born with significant disabilities — Holt founded a Seattle-area law practice to advocate for the needs of older people and people with disabilities. 

While she will begin serving as healthcare advocate at the end of the month, her nomination will not be submitted to the General Assembly until the start of the next regular legislative session on Jan. 8. 

If confirmed by the legislature, she would serve a full four-year term.

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