PRIORITIES • Lower Cost of Living • Policy to

Expand Medicare — Vision, Hearing, Dental, and In-Home Care

Why I believe this — and how I’ll fight for it.

When I was in elementary school — eight years old, maybe younger — I had a job every morning before school. I’d walk into the living room around 5:30 and find my dad asleep in his reclining chair, pill bottles lined up along the seat. I’d help him up and move him to his bed, so he could rest and I could start my day.

I was a boy doing something a trained nurse should have been there to do. My family didn’t have that help. Most families still don’t.

I’ve spent much of my career in healthcare since then — helping build businesses in women’s and family health, and helping pilot value-based care for rural seniors with Medicare under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The goal was to reach the people the system leaves behind — folks who can’t get to a hospital, and towns a hospital can’t reach — by bringing care to them through in-home visits and local pharmacies. I was trying to build a system that puts people over profit while still working in the real world. And the lesson underneath all of it is the one I first learned at 5:30 in the morning as a kid: everyone deserves care, and a country that takes care of its people before they break down is healthier and stronger for it.

Let me say that part plainly, because my faith doesn’t leave me much room to hedge: I believe every single person deserves healthcare. Full stop. I was raised to believe you measure a country by how it treats the people who can’t do a thing for you in return — the sick, the elderly, the poor. I didn’t get that from a poll. I got it in church, and I’ve spent my career trying to build it. A nation this rich, leaving a grandmother to choose between her teeth and her groceries, is a moral failure — and I’m not going to dress it up as anything else.

Start with what we already built. Even the Medicare we have isn’t good enough. It doesn’t cover your teeth, your eyes, or your ears — three of the things that most determine whether a senior stays healthy, independent, and out of the hospital.

Fixing this is cheaper, not more. Take care of people before they land in a hospital bed, and we spend less. Every time.

Here’s what I’ll do — and why

Cover vision, hearing, and dental. Medicare will pay for a heart procedure but not the dental care that might have prevented it. Gum disease is linked to heart disease; untreated vision and hearing loss are now among the leading preventable risk factors for dementia. Leaving these out doesn’t save money — it just moves the bill somewhere costlier later, while a senior suffers in between. I’ll pass the legislation that finally adds full dental, vision, and hearing coverage — hearing aids and eyeglasses included. Your mouth, eyes, and ears aren’t add-ons. They’re your health.

Bring care into the home — at 65, for everyone. This is the big one, and it’s personal. That morning job I had as a boy should have been a nurse’s visit.

I’ll fight to create a Medicare benefit for consistent in-home nursing visits starting at 65 — not just for the already-sick; everyone. A nurse comes to you: checks your vitals, makes sure you’re taking your medications right, and catches the infection or the blood-pressure spike while it’s still small and cheap to treat — instead of six months later in an ER. It’s graduated — more support as you come to need more.

The most expensive care in a senior’s life happens in the hospital, usually from problems that started small and went unwatched. Move that care home, and three things happen at once: seniors stay healthier and keep their dignity, the system spends far less, and we build a whole new field of good local jobs — including in the rural communities that need the work most.

And it frees families. When a parent can no longer manage alone, the job usually falls to a family member — often a child — doing care they were never trained for and can’t afford to hand off. I know. I was that child. No one should have to choose between caring for someone they love and earning the paycheck that keeps their home afloat. In-home care means they don’t have to — and it still costs less than the hospital bed it replaces.

Pay for it by spending smarter. It costs less, not more. Nearly a third of Medicare spending goes to caring for people with serious chronic illness in their last two years of life — much of it repeat hospital stays that earlier, simpler care could have prevented, from patients who cost roughly six times what other seniors do. Prevention and in-home visits drive the average cost of a senior’s care down. Keep people healthy and out of the hospital, and this expansion largely pays for itself. Better care and lower cost are the same thing.

What this means for Our District

Our district is largely rural, and rural hospitals are closing — the nearest one is already too far for many families, and getting farther. That’s why in-home care matters so much here: it brings care to the patient, creates good jobs in our own communities, and lets neighbors look after neighbors instead of shipping our seniors hours away.

But we won’t win any of it while our representatives are funded by the industries that profit from the status quo — insurers who sell seniors the coverage Medicare should already include, and a hospital industry that profits from filling beds. I take nothing from them: no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, and no foreign money. That’s what frees me to fight them and win seniors the care they’ve earned.

The bottom line

We ask people to work their whole lives and pay into Medicare — the least we owe them is coverage that keeps them healthy, and the dignity of growing old at home instead of a hospital ward.

So let’s build it: cover the teeth, the eyes, and the ears, and bring the nurse to the door — the one who should have been there all along. That’s a country that takes care of the people who took care of us. Together, we can make it real.

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