So I'm Karen Greenstone. I'm a member of Medicare for All Indiana. And we've done these healthcare
conversations for many, many years. We did take years off during COVID, but here we are back again.
And I want to thank everybody for coming. So I know that there's a lot of anxiety right now, and we
want to acknowledge that.
our president is threatening to blow up a country. But if you could please turn off your cell phones
so they don't ding in the middle of the conversation, because we're here for a health care conversation
and whatever happens tonight, we're still going to need health care. There are cards on your chair for
questions and answers. And if you need a pen, raise your hand and we'll find a pen for you.
I want to point to the bathroom, which is over there down the hall. And there is also a water fountain
if you get thirsty. Quite honestly, we were hoping to have at least one woman on this panel.
But unfortunately, current ninth district representative Aaron Hochin declined our invitation. And Jim
Graham couldn't be here tonight. He's recovering from an illness and he had to cancel. But he's doing
better. So I want to thank our
co-sponsors with a short description because we have, I think, a really wonderful group of people who
have come together to help create this evening. The NAACP is committed to ending racial health disparities.
The NAACP recognizes that the roots of historic inequity run deep in fragmented public and private health systems.
and disadvantaged opportunities across lifespan. Our aim is not simply disease prevention, but to create
an inclusive culture of healthy people and communities. Our mandate is to drive equitable health outcomes
and transform health care through a comprehensive socioeconomic approach and valuing the whole person.
Brown Countians for Quality Health Care. Since 2011, Brown Countians for Quality Health Care
has served Brown County as a locally-led program dedicated to advocating for and connecting community
members with quality health care services. The League of Women Voters of Brown County and the
Bloomington-Monroe County League of Women Voters, along with the National League of Women Voters, believes
that a basic level of quality health care at an affordable cost should be available to all US residents.
Other health care policy goals should include
Equitable distribution of services, efficient and economical delivery of care, advancement of medical
research and technology, and a reasonable total national expenditure level for healthcare. And I would
like to say right here that one of the ways that the administration would like to pay for this war is
through cutting healthcare. The Indiana Rural Summit is committed to supporting candidates, community
leaders, and volunteers to give rural and small time
Hoosiers a voice, a choice, and a vote. Organizing Indiana is a resource hub focused on realizing a
common challenge. Many of us who are doing important work across Indiana, but often disconnected from
each other, duplicating efforts and missing key opportunities for collective impact. And you can find
Organizing Indiana at OrganizingIndiana.org if you're interested
connecting with folks that think like you do. And then Medicare for All Indiana. It's the Indiana chapter
of Physicians for a National Health Program, a national organization that works for a publicly financed,
not-for-profit, single-payer national health program that would fully cover medical expenses for all
Americans, improve Medicare for All. Students for a national health program, SNAP, S-N-A-H-P,
And this is my hope for the future, these medical students, they are terrific. There are chapters now
in 125 medical schools throughout the US, including several on campuses of Indiana University School
of Medicine. So, our moderator tonight is Dr. Mark Bauman, and I am honored to introduce him, and he will be
leading this conversation about the state of healthcare in the U.S. and Indiana. Dr. Bauman is a retired
pathologist, so he's spent a lot of time in the dark in his career. But tonight we're going to see the
light. We're going to see the light. Thank you. And he was a clinical associate professor emeritus at
the IU School of Medicine. He taught
pathology to medical students and healthcare policy to undergraduates at Indiana University for many
years. Having attended several of his healthcare policy classes as a guest, I found that he engaged
and encouraged the students and brought out the best in them. And he will bring out the best in us tonight.
Dr. Mark Bauman.
Thank you, Karen. I'm not sure what you're describing here, but thank you all for being here this evening.
Thanks to our four candidates. We have two goals this evening. First is to meet and greet our candidates.
These are candidates who were up for the election in the May primary, May 5th, for the ninth district
here in Indiana.
So we want to meet and greet them, get to know them. And secondly, we want to have a discussion about
health care in our country, state, and at the local level. I'm very pleased we have so many experts
in health care with us here. And that's each one of you in the seats who experienced the health care
system and know the good, the bad, and the ugly of it. So we'll have a format here. So those are our
goals. Let's take a quick look. Next slide, please, Rob. Take a quick look at our outline. Hold the
mic closer. Thank you. There we go.
If you four would want to turn your chairs around and even take a seat out here, if you're interested
in seeing the slides, that's fine. They have all received these slides before and know what's coming.
Our outline this evening is to give a quick overview of the 9th District, and then following that, that
would just be two to three minutes. Then each candidate will have two minutes to come up and
do a self-introduction. We do have a timer, and we will limit that to two minutes, please. Thank you.
Then there will be an overview of healthcare in the US, a broad overview of where things stand in our
country. That'll be followed by each candidate having four minutes of open microphone to respond to
that or to talk about whatever aspect of healthcare they want. Then we'll have the question and audience
section, and you have the cards on the chairs. Fill out your card with any question at any time.
Please be sure it is a question and not a statement because we want to give individuals the chance to
respond to those. And then at the very end, at about 820 or so, we'll have a two-minute segment for
each candidate to give a closing statement. Next slide, please, Rob. So our little civics history class
here. It may have been a little while since some of us have been in high school and we forget this.
Congress is a bicameral legislative body. It consists of the Senate and the House, of course.
In the Senate, there are 100 senators, two senators from each state. They are elected to six-year terms.
Currently, there are 53 Republican senators, 45 Democrats, and two independents. As you know, our two
senators in Indiana are Todd Young, who began his first term in 2017, and Jim Banks, who began in 2025.
Next slide, please.
The House is made up of 435 representatives, 435 members in the House of Representatives. Each representative
is elected to a two-year term. So as soon as someone gets elected, they're already beginning their next
campaign cycle two years from now. In the House, there are currently 217 Republicans, 214 Democrats,
one independent, and three vacancies.
The number of representatives from each state is dependent upon the population of that state. The larger
the population, the more representatives. Based on our population, Indiana has nine representatives
in the House. There are seven Republicans and two Democrats. The two Democrats are, the first one is
up in region one, up in the northwest corner of the state. The second one is in district seven, which
consists of part of Indianapolis. Next slide, please.
Our current U.S. representative is Erin Houchin, and she is the incumbent. And she was invited to attend
this evening, but declined the invitation. We have four candidates still with us here. We have one candidate
running as an independent, Mr. Floyd Taylor, and then three of the other four here, Brad Meyer,
Tim Peck, and Kelly, or Kyle Rourke. As Karen said, Jim Graham has a medical illness. He couldn't be
with us here this evening.
Next slide, please, Rob. OK. So now we'd like to move to the two-minute self-introduction. We'll go
in the order listed through the slides. The order here is drawn out of a hat, just so completely random.
So we'll begin here with Mr. Taylor. Thank you for coming. When I decided to run for Congress, I had
one concern that was repeatedly told to me. Rural hospitals were closing due to financing cuts.
And so I introduced a rural mobile health act, bringing medical services to communities that can't support
a hospital. Then came a challenge from my wife. If you think this is easy, fix Medicare. So I developed
a Medicare Comprehensive Care and Fair Premiums Act, expanding coverage to include dental, vision, hearing,
and full-cost prescription drugs
while eliminating income-based premium tiers and removing premiums for seniors that make under $100,000
a year. Building on that momentum and free from party or lobbyist influence, I crafted the Medicaid
Integrity Access and Accountability Act to strengthen program integrity and expand access to primary
and behavioral care. I also authored the Veterans Dimension Memory Care Access and Accountability Act,
guaranteeing timely
high-quality dementia-specific care for our veterans with enforceable standards and dedicated funding.
My signature legislation is the Main Street Health Compact Act, a comprehensive fraud-resistant patient-first
healthcare framework that replaces the Affordable Care Act, ensures universal access, eliminates denial-based
coverage restrictions, and enforces strict cost transparency while allowing private insurers to remain
part of the system.
All these bills deliver more health care coverage while costing less than any current plans. Thank you.
Hi. I'm Brad Meyer. I'm running for the US House of Representatives. You can't really understand the
problem until you've talked to the people that have to live with the results. Yes, sir. Sorry.
That's why I've had two universal health care forums, five roundtable discussions with people, and 15
town halls. And in those discussions, I've heard from people that have lost children because of insurance
denials. I've heard from mothers that are struggling to get care for their children because of the complexity
of the medical system. I've talked to adults with disabilities that are struggling in a denial-based
system to get the care that they need.
These aren't isolated incidents, and they're not an accident. They are the result of a system that uses
private care as a profit center and public care as a cost to be minimized. That's why I'm a member of
Physicians for a National Health Program. That's why Universal Health Care and Medicare for All is a
center point of my campaign, because I've looked at the facts.
But as it turns out, the facts aren't what's holding us back when it comes to health care. And when
you see what's really happening, you can't unsee it. We are stuck in a coercive relationship with a
for-profit health care system. And they say all the right things, but it never changes. They say, nobody
will ever take care of you like I'll take care of you. I know things are bad.
I'll change, just give me time. And everybody should have healthcare. But what this really is, is just
an attempt to stall. They're just keeping us trapped. And it's time for a change. Thank you. My name's
Dr. Tim Peck. I'm an emergency physician taking care of our neighbors here in southern Indiana. I'm
also an advocate in DC that put together a congressional
coalition of bipartisan congresspeople that got telemedicine passed for the United States over the course
of years, just in time for the pandemic where millions of people's lives were saved. It costs way too
much to go to work in this company, in this company as well as this country. It costs too much to go
to work in this country. There's the gas
that you need to get to work, there's the housing that you have, there's the childcare you need so you
can even have the time to go to work, there's the education that you had that you need to pay for what
you needed to get your job, there's the groceries that you have on your credit card, and then there's
the health insurance that comes out of your paycheck. And because of this, your health suffers. People
are forced to choose preservatives over fresh food. Second jobs over sleep, fatigue over exercise,
paying bills over filling prescriptions. Our government solutions are insufficient and designed poorly.
Medicare helps every aging and disabled individual in this country. Still, 20% of those citizens are
in medical debt. People lose their houses when they need long-term care or ICU stays. And still, there's
no dental, vision, or hearing coverage.
Obamacare gives workers health care, but subsidizes private insurance companies in the process. And
Medicaid and underinsured can't cover the bills of hospitals, and so therefore rural hospitals, like
the one in my own backyard, close. That is not a system. That is abandonment. I hope I can earn your
trust and your vote tonight, and look forward to a very good farm. Thank you. Thanks, Tim.
Kind of hard to go after, Tim. I mean, you know, doctor and all. Yeah, name's Kyle Roark. I'm a candidate
for Congress here at 9th Congressional District. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation this evening.
I'm a former assembly line worker, Chrysler, former US Navy officer. And I just want to say, first and
foremost, I've been very blessed in life to have good health care, either through the UAW or some of
the companies I've worked for.
been very fortunate in that respect. But a lot of folks aren't that unfortunate. And we need to present
policies that can help our folks in the 9th Congressional District. We don't need folks having to pick
between paying utility bills or grocery bills versus going to the hospital, right? This is the greatest
country on the planet. There's no reason we should have that in this country.
Some of my policies, obviously, I'm going to advocate for ACA subsidies to be reinstated. I think that's
the most pragmatic thing we could do quickly in January when we take back the House. I'm also advocating
for universal health care as a supplement to a private insurance policy. I'm concerned that if we go
down the path of universal health care right away, that it limits choice.
And we do have a Dr. Schroeder-Joner hands, too. So we have to have, the system has to be workable.
We have to have choice, but at a reasonable price, okay? I think we also need to look at antitrust
legislation with some of the big insurance companies, as well as some of the big prescription drug companies.
I think there's, like, we all know healthcare is expensive. Prescription drugs are expensive.
But there's a reason for that, right? There's something going on in the marketplace that's driving prices
up. And I would propose looking at some antitrust legislation to understand what companies are colluding
and what companies are pricing the market about time. Okay. Anyway, thank you very much. We'll talk
more. Appreciate it. Thank you very much for those introductory remarks. Appreciate it.
This is a very, very brief view of the U.S. health care system. Next slide, please, Rob. Buckle up because
here we go. You can evaluate a football team based on three components. You can look at the offense,
how it's producing points. You can look at the defense, how it's preventing points and number of turnover.
You can look at the special teams. Next slide, please, Rob.
You can think, you can evaluate any healthcare system in a similar fashion. You can look through three
lenses to evaluate a healthcare system. You can look at it in terms of the people's access to that system.
You can look at it in terms of the cost of the system. You can look at it in terms of the quality of
the system. Next slide please, Rob. So we'll do that here briefly. With respect to access, access in
our system means health insurance.
Where do we get our health insurance in the United States? There are multiple places. About 50% of the
people who have health insurance get that through their employer. An employer will pay part of the premium,
the employee pays part, the employee is also responsible for deductibles, co-pay, co-insurance, et cetera.
But employer-based, employer-linked insurance has been a part of the US healthcare system since the
early 1920s and then more so into the 40s and 50s.
No, go back please Rob. I'm not that fast. Medicaid is another means of insurance for people in our
country. Medicaid is a federally run insurance program run in conjunction with the states, individual
states, and those target people who are of low income. Medicaid has a subsection called CHIP, Children's
Health Insurance Plan, and CHIP
helps to provide insurance for children under 18 years of age who otherwise might not have insurance.
About 20% of the people with health insurance are covered by Medicaid. Medicare, you're familiar with
probably, that's a national federal health program available to people 65 years of age and over. It's
financed by
by you and by me and by our employers. Every paycheck you receive, 1.45% of your paycheck goes to CMS,
the Center for Medicare and Medicaid to support Medicare. Your employer also contributes 1.45%. This
is how Medicare is funded. If you have paid into that system for 10 years, and then you are eligible
to be enrolled in Medicare at age 65.
About 15% of the people with insurance are enrolled in Medicare. The vast majority of people over 65,
90% plus, do have Medicare. But of the overall population, it's about 15% of people with health insurance.
People can have insurance through the military. If you're an active military member, you are enrolled
in TRICARE for yourself and for your family members.
If you received a general or an honorable discharge from your service, then that individual is typically
able to have healthcare through the VA Veterans Administration healthcare system for the rest of their
life. Maybe three to four percent of people get their health insurance through the military system.
There is a marketplace exchange.
and this is this kind of confusing area in here. The Marketplace Exchange was established by the Affordable
Care Act, which is the same thing as Obamacare, and that was enacted into legislation in 2010. One of
the components of ACA, the Affordable Care Act, was to establish state-based marketplace exchanges.
You can go to healthcare.gov, go to Indiana,
And you can see what plans are available from insurance companies that you can sign up for. You review
the options and click, click, click, enter your information and choose what you want. And so about maybe
seven to eight percent of people with insurance get it through the marketplace exchange. We'll come
back to this marketplace exchange in a minute. Finally, there's the Indian Health Services. Most people
have never heard of that.
There's the Alaskan Native Tribal Health System for people in that indigenous population. Marketplace
has about maybe 7%, 8%. Did I say that? So we have a wide variety here of places to get insurance.
Next slide, please, Rob. You'd think that everyone would have insurance. There's so many options. Well,
that's not the case, of course. Back in 2010, there were about 50, 5-0, 50 million people in our country
without health insurance.
By 2023, that dropped by about a half to somewhere in the area of 27 million people remain uninsured.
But that decrease in the number of uninsured people was due to the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010.
The Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility for Medicaid. There are limits to your income to be eligible
for Medicaid.
What the Affordable Care Act did was to increase the amount of money you can make to be eligible for
Medicaid. That was one option. Another big component of the ACA was the establishment of those marketplace
exchanges, state-by-state marketplace virtual exchanges. It's kind of a complicated system because the
ACA helped make insurance affordable by offering premium tax credits.
You've probably heard of premium tax credits. A premium tax credit means that the tax you paid can be
used as a credit to pay an insurance company for your policy in the marketplace. So they're premiums,
they're tax credits used for premiums, a premium tax credit. That'll come into play in just a minute.
Next slide, please, Rob. We still have about 25, maybe 30 million people currently uninsured in our country.
And the prognosis for that situation is not good. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office projects
that within the next eight years, an additional 14 million people will lose their health insurance that
they currently have. An additional 14 million people are projected by the CBO, the Congressional Budget
Office, that they will lose their health insurance. Well, what's going on? Two major components take
at work here.
The first is the Budget Reconciliation Package, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed
by the current president on the 4th of July, 2025. The legislation included multiple changes to Medicaid
with eligibility for Medicaid, some work requirements and other components.
It made some changes to the ACA marketplace eligibility. It made changes to Medicare policy. And it
made changes to CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Plan. From those changes in the legislation, it's
projected an additional 10 people will lose their insurance that they currently have. Part one. Part
two was that what took place was the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credit for the Affordable
Care Act. What the heck does that mean?
That means that in addition to the regular premium tax credits in the original ACA plan, during COVID,
there were two acts passed, the American Rescue Plan, which you may have heard of, and the Inflation
Reduction Act plan. Those offered additional federal subsidies as premium tax credits. These were enhanced
premium tax credits on top of the ones that were already available.
that legislation had a lifespan to set to expire in December 31st, 2025. Congress had the option to
renew those enhanced premium tax credits. Congress voted to not renew those enhanced premium tax credits
so that extra subsidies were not available and the people paying on some of those marketplace plans,
their insurance will no longer be affordable to them. It's projected four million people will lose their insurance
by the expiration of those enhanced premium tax credits. You can go home and talk about enhanced premium
tax credits and people will be very impressed with you. Next slide please. Bottom line on access to
look at access in our healthcare system is that indeed the United States is the only industrialized
or developed democracy without universal healthcare. Next slide please.
Access, okay, this three-legged stool is one way to look at this. The three legs of that stool are access,
cost, and quality. If you don't have good structure for that stool, it's not going to function.
Next slide, please. Let's take a very quick look at cost. I'm almost done here. This is a complicated
slide a little bit, but look at that $29,000. $29,000 is the average price that a family of four paid
for healthcare expenditures in 2024.
$29,000 was the average price that a family of four spent on healthcare. That includes what, if they
have an employer-based policy, what the employer would have put in, it includes deductions, it includes
co-pay, co-insurance. $29,000 in 2024. Next slide, please, Rob. We can look at the cost by another method.
We can take all the money we spend on healthcare in one year,
all the healthcare expenditures as a numerator. We can look at the number of people in the country at
the time as a denominator. We can take that numerator divided by the denominator and come out with the
cost per person. We can take the healthcare expenditures in 2024 of $5 trillion divided by 350 million
people, and that comes out to
$14,775 per person that we spent on healthcare in the United States in that year. That's continuing
to go up. If we look at comparable countries, if we look at Switzerland, in that year spent $9,900.
Germany, Netherlands, Austria. If we look at comparable countries, the average of our comparable countries
average of healthcare was $7,800.
we were spending $15,000, almost twice the amount of money per person, on our healthcare system.
Next slide, please, Rob. Cost, that stool is even further unstable. Next slide, please. Well, if we're
spending this much, we would really expect we're gonna get a good return on our investment for our dollar
spent. So let's look at the quality and see if indeed we are getting our money's worth or not. Look
at this top, or the red line here.
This slide shows infant mortality rate in the US versus our peer countries. Infant mortality rate consists
of the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births in which the child has died within one year of
birth. The infant mortality rate consists of the number of infant deaths within one year of birth.
per 1,000 live births. The United States infant mortality rate in 23-24 was 5.6. For every 1,000 babies
born, 5.6 on average did not live beyond one year. Other countries' rates were much lower coming down
here. Japan's infant mortality rate was 1.8. We're not taking good care of our infants, clearly.
Next slide, please, Rob.
One more slide here on quality. This is kind of hard to look at at first, but what we're looking at
are deaths, the number of deaths per 1,000 people who are under age 70 with respect to the cause of
death by different chronic diseases. We'll look at diabetes, liver disease, cirrhosis, and so forth.
We'll look at kidney disease, respiratory disease. These are the data. This is the graph for the United States.
These are the graphs for our comparable country. If we look at the number of deaths per 100,000 in diabetes
in the United States, it's somewhere around 10. In our comparable countries, it's here at four. For
liver disease, it looks like it's about 14, 15. In other countries, it is, what is that, eight or so.
Kidney disease is way up. You can see that compared to our comparable countries. Our management of chronic
disease is not good quality.
Next slide, please, Rob. Finally, life expectancy is a very simple thing to measure. What is, how long
can people expect to live in the United States? In 2021, we had a life expectancy of 76.1.
Our peer countries, the average life expectancy was 82.4. That is, I can't, is that 76? So 6.2, 6.3
years less than the average of our peers.
And Japan had an average age of 84 and a half years. So eight and a half years longer in Japan. Our
quality is not living up to what we might expect, right? Next slide, please, Rob. So our school is completely
unstable. Next slide, please. I'm done. I'm going to turn it over to you gentlemen to talk about some
of the problems we have and maybe some of the ideas and what we can do about this perhaps.
And we will go in reverse order here, please. I think Kyle will start with you. Thank you. What's good?
Yeah, I appreciate your time. So obviously, I got the data. I looked at it. And what popped out at me
was us versus Japan. I was like, wow.
Got the best quality, lowest cost. What are they doing over there? Wow, we need some of that. So anyway,
I did some research, and I looked into it. They have a universal health care policy, but they also have
good pricing. They have good pricing. Their health care policies are priced right. And the other part
of it is preventive care. They really focus in on preventive care.
And, you know, after I really got into it and I thought about it, I was like, yeah, they don't have
furniture in their houses. I mean, if you really think about it, right, breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
you're doing this, right? And then I did a little bit more research and I was like, what's the leading
cause of death in the United States of America? I kind of thought heart disease, cancer, falls, people
falling and breaking hips.
broken bones, from falling as they get older. And it's because of lack of mobility. So I really think
we need to advocate for policies that reward companies or institutions that emphasize preventive care.
For example, a company I currently work for, they give, I think it's $50 or $100 for a dental exam,
$50 or $100 for just a medical exam.
$50 or $100 for an EKG, what have you, right? That encourages folks to go to the doctor before something
bad happens, right, on a yearly basis. A dental exam is another opportunity where you could detect if
there's an issue. So I would advocate for rewarding those institutions, government or private, that
emphasize private healthcare or private incentives.
you know, 10, 1,000 or $1,200 off your health care bill in that institution. I think that's a good way
to go because it encourages, I mean, I don't know about you folks, but when they're sticking an extra
$1,000 in my pocket just to go to the doctor and get checked up, I'm going to go to the doctor. I mean,
so, I mean, that's one thing I'm going to look at, of course. And then also ACA subsidies, we need to
reinstitute that.
And then, of course, the enhanced premium tax credits. Get those back in there. Those are some big policies
that I'd advocate for. But I will say that from another policy perspective, what I would look at is
the cost of health care in general. It just feels like, whether it's insurance companies or prescription
drug companies,
Things are just too expensive. Why? Why are they too expensive? Well, from my experience, things are
too expensive because there tends to be like a monopoly in the market. There's something going on in
the market that they're driving prices up. So I would advocate for looking for policies, maybe even
antitrust policies or legislation that would break up some of these drug companies and insurance companies
that are driving things up.
There's a lot of good antitrust legislation out there on other examples for tech. We need to bring those
policies over for health care now. Other than that, those are kind of my policies. I will leave you
with one thing. I got out of the Navy when I was 50, 54 now. Oh, I'm out of time. OK, I'll tell you
that story next time. All right, thank you.
Health care is a human right. We all deserve health care. You all deserve health care no matter who
you are. I live in a rural health desert where our local hospital closed a few years ago. And that hospital
has no chance of opening up right now with the system of health care that we are seeing, with the big,
beautiful bill going through. And who wants to buy a hospital
and let people into that hospital if on January 1st, 2027, we're going to have millions more people
uninsured. But even right now, it's disproportionately affecting rural populations. 27 to 29% of truckers,
of farmers, of agricultural workers do not have insurance. We saw the rate up there being 7, 8, 9% for
the general population.
That's the reality that's playing out right now in our district everywhere. And let me tell you how
it looks outside of Bloomington. There are 18 counties in this district. You cannot deliver a baby in
Lawrence County at their hospital, in Salem Hospital, in Harrison Hospital.
Scott County Hospital. There is no hospital in Ohio. There is no hospital in Switzerland. You cannot
deliver in Dearborn County. You cannot deliver in Jennings County. You can't deliver a child there.
When I call 911 in where I am, where there's no hospital, the 911 system is in shambles as well.
After 6 p.m., they say, no one's coming. At our trunker treat in October, a little boy fell off his
shoulders. The mom came, or someone came and ran and got me. I went to the mother and said,
did you call 911? She said, no one's coming. And so I said, get in the car and drive to your nearest
emergency department, which is the emergency department that I work in, which is a standalone emergency
department serving our community.
And so that is the result of not having a hospital. It's a solution, not a great one. And so we need
change and we need a specific plan. If we, as I said, health care is a human right. If we expand health
care coverage to everybody right now, let's talk about what will happen. I want that to happen so badly.
But there is a first step of making immediate change when I got to Congress. And that immediate change
is taking down costs.
Because if we expand coverage to everybody, we're just expanding coverage that is so expensive to everybody.
So, get rid of prior authorization. The thing that stands in between me and all of you to get you the
test that you need. It is, bloats the system like no other. Monopolies should be broken up. Aetna CVS,
two Fortune 500 companies coming together.
Optum United, two Fortune 500 companies coming together and owning the whole spectrum of care, rising
our prices. There's antitrust that we can do today to go after them. Billion dollar pharma campaigns,
executive bonuses, shareholder payouts, your Medicare taxes go to that when it's taken out of your paycheck.
Part of that goes to insurance companies and pharma companies that are doing that with it. We should
audit that and make sure that never happens again. This needs to happen now, and the missing piece isn't
ideas, it's implementation. And so we need someone who will win in this district, who will work with
Republicans and Democrats to make these costs controlled so we can realize our progressive values and
everybody can have the healthcare insurance that they need.
Thank you. We are not going to untie this Gordian knot of red tape and complexity. We've got to cut
through it and come up with something new, which is Medicare for all based on something that already
exists and already works, which is Medicare. The big question is,
Why can't we just do this incrementally? Why can't we just do it one little piece at a time? And it
comes to my mind, there's an old family story that when my aunt was little, and I mean she was like
maybe this many or this many, my grandparents had company over. And she came padding out with a glass
of water, and the guy drank the glass of water, and she took it and went running back into the back
of the house, and she came back with another glass,
He started drinking it until my grandfather said, you know, she can't reach the sink. And as it turns
out, she was dipping out of the toilet. So in this analogy, the clean, drinkable water that goes into
a toilet is the good health care providers, doctors and nurses and people, provide and can provide.
And the toilet is the for-profit system
that that care has to flow through. It doesn't matter how good the care is, as long as it's going into
a system that's going to corrupt it. You break up a big health care monopoly, they'll reassemble. They'll
still manipulate. By the way, 100 people a year die at home falling off a furniture every year. That's
why I don't stand on chairs. And there's a lot of things that we
can do and should do. Value-based care, getting private equity out of medicine, telemedicine, these
are all very important things. We need to do them, but they are still subject to the corrupting influence
of the system. We need to replace the system. And Medicare for all isn't some great leap into the dark.
Half of us are pretty much covered under a public system anyway. And the core
is very simple. The core promise is very simple. You keep your doctor. You keep your health care. And
we get that layer of bureaucracy based on profit out of the middle. And we have to do this in a way
that's controlled. And a lot of people are afraid. How are we going to do this? Year one, no one loses
coverage while we enroll additional people.
We provide predictable funding to keep rural hospitals open. We expand broadband for telemedicine, because
telemedicine really is hugely important to the future of our medicine. In the second year, enrollment
expands while families keep their doctor. And by the third year, coverage is fully in place, and the
risk of you losing your home because you get sick goes away. We can do this. England did this in six
years, and three of those years,
They were fighting the Germans. Medicare was implemented in the 60s in one year using three by five
index cards. Healthcare system without bankruptcy isn't a dream. It's a reality everywhere but here.
Thank you.
I agree with everything these people have said. And I've already written the solutions, all of them,
solutions to all of the slides, solutions to all of their suggestions. I've written the legislation.
It's on my website at floyd2026.com. My Main Street Health Compact is universal health care.
It doesn't say universal health care anywhere in it. It doesn't say Medicaid for all anywhere in the
bill. And it still lets the insurance companies believe that they still have a voice. But it basically
totally wipes out any power they have. Most of them will be gone by the time it's fully implemented.
My Medicare reforms.
It pays for all costs if you make under $100,000 a year. Every single thing. Medical, dental, vision,
hearing, prescriptions. You don't pay for it anymore. It's 100% covered. I don't know if I have four
minutes worth of stuff to say about this because the solutions are there. They were easy to write.
If you like reading legislation, it's all available on my website. If you don't, I have plain language
explanations. I have the fiscal breakdowns, where the money's coming from, who's going to pay for it.
And most of these are cost neutral or save money. Yeah, I really don't have a lot more to add to that.
It's just I have all the solutions. They're all written.
It's legislation. It's text ready to drop on the floor and ready to go. That's it. Thank you. Thank
you for your responses and your comments. Appreciate those. We're already up with the Q&A session. Rob
is the head of the game. Thank you. So we have until 820. We have a good half hour here to have a Q&A
session. So you have on your chairs the index card.
If you need a pencil or pen, just raise your hand. If you've already filled out a card, just pass, hold
up your card if you already have a question written, and we'll have a couple, Rob will come around and
pick them up, and we'll sort through those quickly just so we're not, so we get, we're not having redundant
questions. We'll kind of sort them just a little bit, and then we'll begin that Q and A, so. Great,
thank you so much.
Yes. You had the $29,000, but you didn't say that included premiums, but I think you meant that. Yeah,
the question was on one of my slides, it was $29,000 annual costs. That includes premiums. It does include
premiums. It's the total health care expenditure for that average family, right? And there was a breakdown
of premiums.
It was like $15,000. The employer put in so much, the employee put in so much, and then we added, the
study added, I think it was like $3,900 for additional deductibles, copay, coinsurance. Yeah, yeah.
Where should we start, Rob? Okay. Okay, question is, I think I can read this. Just how do you propose
to simplify
to simply eliminate multi-billion dollar insurance companies? Okay. So how do you propose? Doctors can't
read you. Okay, so the question deals with multi-billion dollar insurance companies that how can, the
question is how do we eliminate multi-billion dollar insurance companies? I'll leave it at that.
Should we just go down the line here? Does anyone want to jump in first? Mr. Taylor, please. By building
a coalition of patients, health care providers, and small business owners who all benefit from reforms,
the current system serves only a few powerful interests at the expense of everyone else.
When people understand that these reforms provide better care at lower cost, political opposition becomes
unsustainable. Additionally, by maintaining a role for private insurance in the Main Street Health Compact
Act, we reduce motivation for them to oppose reform. So the first attempt to get universal nonprofit
health care, single payer,
happened in about 1947. So we're working on 80 years. That is a really hard question, right?
And for 80 years, we've been struggling with it. And if we don't finally admit that it's time and fight
for it, we're going to go another 80 years. And we're finally to the point that 50% of doctors are in
favor of a single payer system. And a lot of people are as well.
We're getting to critical mass, and we're going to have to make the change, and it's not going to be
popular with people that have a lot of money. But we have to do it, because the rest of us are dying,
literally. The insurance companies that we have in this country are some of the most powerful institutions
in the world ever. And a large part of that has to do with the fact that they can stuff money into our
pockets when we get to Congress.
So firstly is swearing off that you cannot take money from corporate packs, of which I have sworn off
that. And then we need tools that we have and tools that we don't have. One of the tools we have is
these are enormous companies, so enormous that they have violated trust rules. And we can litigate that
and legislate that. And finally, tools we don't have
is about making it so that, again, the money that comes out of your paycheck can't go to their bonuses,
can't go to their shareholder payouts. It can only go to the operations that they do and cover those
costs plus a little bit to break them down from having to be able to take money from us and instead
give money to people as their name implies, insurance companies.
Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I would strongly advocate for antitrust legislation. They did it
with John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. They can do it for the big insurance companies. There's no
reason they can't do it. We've done it before. So we just have to have the will of the congressional
representatives to have committee hearings and actually go through the process, pull up every single
CEO of insurance companies in the country, bring them up there, have them testify,
Who's getting bonuses? Who's getting executive compensation? All those different perks they're getting
and find out what we can do from an antitrust legislation perspective to get the cost down. That's really
the only way we're going to deal with the billionaire or the billion dollar insurance companies. They're
not going to do it on their own. It's just like big tobacco, right? Same thing with big tobacco. We
had to do the same thing with them.
I would strongly take a hardline position on that, and it's well overdue. Thank you. Thank you. The
next question is, what are your plans to address health care disparities for communities of color in
Indiana? What are your plans to address health care disparities for communities of color in Indiana?
Brad, maybe we could start with you and go this way.
Come back. So the disparities for people of color and people that live in poverty are significant. In
the United States, we died six years earlier. In Indiana, we are a 39th for life expectancy. So we're
worse than the average in the United States. And if you are poor or a person of color, it's even worse
than that. That's one of the reasons that I'm an advocate for universal health care.
Everybody gets health care, rich, poor, black, white. Everybody gets health care. It shouldn't be based
on your socioeconomic status or your race or how much money you make. It is a human right. Thank you.
So there's a number of issues here, two issues to attack immediately. One is at the bedside. When you
look at giving pain medicines to African-Americans,
from doctors. Even if you yourself are black, you don't give as much pain medicines to black people
as you do white people. That has been proven. So it's not about one race and another race not having
good relations. This is about an education system and the biases that we have. So it starts with my
education in medical school and residency and making it nationally standardized
of what I need to learn to make that not happen. And secondly, Medicaid rates are abysmal. Doctors do
not want to take them. What we're seeing right now in southern Indiana in Floyd County is because Harrison
County closed its OB program, the Floyd County Hospital is preferentially taking private, insured, and
Medicare patients because they have such a full roster, they can have an excuse not to take them. We
need to raise those rates.
Yeah, back in 2023, Kentucky passed the Medicaid bill via Andy Beshear. I would advocate for a similar
policy in Indiana. I mean, obviously it's a state bill, but that directly impacts the 250% of the poverty
line. So basically anybody that makes under 78,000 a year will be eligible for that policy and for that
coverage. I think we need a policy like that in Indiana.
Honestly, I don't think Braun is gonna do it. Probably not gonna happen, but we need a policy like that
in Indiana for sure, because that definitely addresses those folks who are in that poverty area and
need that care. Yeah, thank you. I really don't have a specific solution to that specific problem, but
my rural mobile
Healthcare Act brings coverage to the people. You don't have to go to a specific place to get it. They'll
drive to your town, go to the post office, see a doctor. So if you're an all-black community, voila,
you have a doctor's office right there. My Main Street Healthcare Act gives everybody health insurance.
There are no more uninsured people. So anybody can get coverage.
coverage they need and the healthcare they need. Thank you. One thought occurs to me in terms of compensation
from insurance companies for healthcare provision. It is certainly not the case that each insurer pays
the same for each procedure throughout across the board. Remember, we have employer-based, employer-linked
healthcare insurance
Those are separately group plans with private insurers. Those private insurance companies will pay a
certain rate for a routine appendectomy without complications. Medicare will pay as determined a rate
for its reimbursement for a routine appendectomy without complications. It will be much lower than the
private insurance companies. Medicaid has its own rate for a routine appendectomy without complications
that it will pay to its providers
It is indeed much less than the Medicare rate. CHIP, Children's Health, and so forth. So part of the
conundrum here of the insurance companies is that the private insurance companies pay the highest for
their services. Many providers are reluctant to take, say, a 50% decrease in the compensation for their
services if everything were to go to Medicare, for example.
Now that wouldn't have to happen because Medicare could set its rate at whatever it determines it to
be. But as it currently stands, there's much greater payment from the private insurance companies than
Medicare would pay than for Medicaid would pay. So that comes into this mix. Any other comments on that?
Anything else to add on that? Anybody? Okay.
Because I think that's part of the equation. We think, well, what does it matter if you're covered by
Medicare, if you're covered by Medicaid? Well, it matters a great deal financially. And I think, Tim,
you pointed out that the Medicaid rates are often below the cost of care. So many hospitals cannot accept
Medicaid patients. Any hospital will take a combination of privately insured patients, Medicare patients,
and usually some Medicaid patients.
The Medicaid patients are essentially covered by the higher paying plans. But if your population is
essentially Medicaid based, you are not compensated enough to even cover your costs for those Medicaid
patients. So that's part of this whole process. Yeah, Brad and then Tim. So I was talking about the
Gordian knot of complexity. And I think that you gave a good example right there, right?
And there are things that we can, again, and should do in the current system to help reduce the disparities
in health care for both minorities and the poor and the rural. But it's always going to be cleaner water
going into a system that's going to contaminate it. And over time, it's going to drag it down. And we're
going to be right back where we were. Perfect example.
Infant mortality rate that you showed at one time was significantly higher. And then the government
got involved and they made changes. And it came down to about twice of what it was in other countries.
And then they said, done. And then it's been drifting back up. Any of these solutions we talk about
are all temporary in a system that causes contamination. The Medicaid rates are?
terrible, but Medicare rates are, say it this way, private insurance rates are as much as 250% of Medicare.
There is an enormous gap in between what private insurance is subsidizing our system versus Medicare.
So if we were to tomorrow drop everyone to Medicare, we would not be able to afford the system we have.
We need to fix the system to be able to expand Medicare to everyone.
Yeah, the system I've written up puts all these costs on a public dashboard. You can go look at it.
So when you find out that you're getting charged twice as much for an appendectomy as somebody else,
you can call them on it. All of the prices will have to even out because there's just no business sense
in paying twice as much for something you can get for half as much.
I always hate to admit this, but Dr. Peck is right. And he's right about a lot of things regarding
healthcare. It is true that there's big disparities and they have to be fixed. My anxiety or uneasiness,
as they say in sign language, is we're going to go another 80 years trying to fix that problem. We know
that there is a solution.
The rest of the world does it more effectively and efficiently, and we're going to have to walk and
chew gum at the same time. Physicians for a national health program have been working on this problem.
There is legislation in place, and we need to work on it. We need to fix it. But we can't stall and
delay and slow roll and say, we've got to fix this first. We've got to do both.
add to the mix here to the discussion that there's a lot of inefficiency in terms of administrative
costs in our current system. When you have numerous, numerous private insurance companies, each has
their own clients. They have their own staff doing the billing. A provider has to deal not only with
one insurance company, but dozens and dozens of insurance companies. And that physician, his group,
his or her group,
will have to provide numerous billers to negotiate. And those prices that the different insurance companies
give to that office are different. And each one is individually negotiated. And so we have a lot of
overhead expenses. And I don't have good data on this, but it's something on the order of maybe 25%
of that $5 trillion we spent is all on administrative overhead. Now, if anyone has a better number, please
But it's on that caliber, on that level of administrative overhead costs. We could still spend $5 million,
but we could get another $1.3 million, $1.3 trillion by eliminating perhaps all that redundancy in these
processes. That is one argument for a single payer system. Tim, please. I've seen numbers, 20, 25, 30,
35% as well as the overhead.
I just want to make a point around original Medicare, right? Medicare without any insurance companies.
It has a ton of overhead as well. And it has privatization around it. So the people who actually cut
the checks for Medicare and pay the doctors and the hospitals, it's a private company that does it.
And those companies, most of them are owned by Blue Cross Blue Shield Anthem. And so,
The insurance companies have infiltrated even our original Medicare system. We need to clean it up in
so many different ways before expanding something that just gives them more favor. These numbers are
true and some people ask, you know, I've written all these bills and they
seem to cost a lot of money and how am I going to pay for them? That's how. The fraud, the waste, the
double billing, the abuse of the system, it costs so much money that just cutting it out pays for 50%
of the stuff I've proposed. These next few questions are related and it has to do with electability.
the electability specifically in the 9th district. So what plans do you have to be able to win the election
in the 9th district? And one question you would ask about in this gerrymandered district. No, I'm not
going to win. There's no chance I'm going to win. I mean, it's possible.
But at this point, I'm probably going to end up being a writing candidate and we all know the odds.
There's not a chance that I'm going to win. But I'm going to try and stranger things have happened.
Electability in southern Indiana is really about
two things, getting people that voted. We lost two to one in the last election, and that was pretty
common, but we lost actually worse than average, and we need to get 65,000 people to cross over, or
we need to get 120,000 people off the couch that didn't vote at all. And what it really comes down to
is that people are looking for a change. They want something better, and we need to start offering it.
We need to start fighting for the things that are going to make a difference in their life. We need
to help them understand why what we're offering will make a difference in their life, and we have to
be willing to fight for it. So, I don't think that we can come in with policies that say, well, we're
going to try to clean things up and we'll see what happens. That's not going to get people off the couch.
It's not going to motivate people. Okay? We have to offer them something real, and my time is up.
What I'm offering him is to have a hospital back in their backyard, in my backyard, to be able to call
911 and have people actually show up, to be able to afford going to work with gasoline being so expensive
that they don't want to fill up their car to even get to work and childcare being so expensive that
they actually lose work, lose money for going to work. These are motivating factors. I've run a campaign
for now for three years building this.
And you see some people with my shirts on here that I did not ask them to and they show up because we
have 900 volunteers at this point. We've knocked on tens of thousands of doors. We are doing that, making
the calls. We're sending postcards. And if anyone would love to do that with us, please come to anyone
with one of these shirts and ask how to do it because they've done it. And we're going to do it together
and we're going to win this, not only because of our campaign,
because thousands of people are showing up to these No Kings events and getting out like they've never
gotten out before in this district. And we have DNA of Democrat in this district, and we can flip it
back to days like Lee Hamilton, God rest his soul, brought to us. Thank you. All right. So my electability
strategy is simple. It's this. I'm trying to put more money in people's pockets, period.
I'm trying to figure out a way to provide cost avoidance in terms of health care or allow them to save
money on gas prices, gross prices, rent prices, housing prices, and the like, period. And if you advocate
for those economic interests, you're going to pull in those independent voters. You're going to pull
in those disenfranchised Republicans, because that's the language they know. It's that simple. I think
in the past,
We, you know, Democratic Party, our party, we focus too much on other things. We have to focus on what
impacts people's lives right now. And it's those things I just mentioned. That is my policies. That's
my strategy going forward. And quite frankly, I don't think there's any other way to get those impenetrable
voters and those disenfranchised Republicans. We've got to speak in their terms. Okay, great. Thank you.
This next question deals with Medicare Advantage. And I'll give you my 30-second primer on Medicare
Advantage. Medicare A, B, C, and D. There's Medicare A, there's Medicare B. Medicare A pays for inpatient
hospital costs. That's what you pay into your system with each paycheck. Medicare Part B concerns outpatient
physician provisions.
the healthcare provider, not the institution as such. Medicare D, D is for drugs. Medicare Part D, you
select a healthcare plan and there I think at the latest count there were 1,160 available drug care
plans in the state of Indiana. If you can figure out which one is best for you, you come tell me because
I'd like to know how to do that. So you do need to select a Part D plan.
Now part A and part B and part D, not always part D, but those A and B will have deductibles, not deductible,
no, they will have deductibles and they will have co-insurance. And that doesn't have a limit.
So you are not, you're under-insured if all you have is part A, part B, and part D, so you need to get
a separate policy, a meta-gap policy, go out and buy another insurance plan,
a fourth one to cover the gaps, the insufficient components of Part A, B, and D. So welcome to the Medicare
world. You'll have four insurance plans going on. Or you can do Medicare Part C. Medicare Part C is
called Medicare Advantage. And that is set up such that the CMS, the Medicare office, will pay a private
insurance company a fixed amount of money, and then that insurance company will
take on essentially the risk for your healthcare. So there's a mechanism that simplifies many things
by the government simply offloading to a private insurance company payment for your expenses. There
are some problems with that, but I think that's fine. It's not fine, but I'll stop at that. So the question
is, what is your view of
of Medicare Advantage, and do some people see it as too unfair and capitalistic? Tim, may I start with
you, and then we'll go this way. I'm going to take 20 seconds, but I'm getting the word from the team
that Trump has taco'd, meaning that he has not bombed Iran. So that's what I'm hearing. So I don't know
the details.
I feel better. I don't know how everyone else does. So let's talk about Medicare Advantage for a second.
So one of the ways of weakening insurance companies is actually using Medicare Advantage as a lever.
Right now, when Medicare Advantage overcharges patients, and they make too much money because
they overcharged, then they get sued by the federal government. And then they settle for a lesser amount
than they actually charged for.
We need to put in rules that have real teeth so that when they overcharge, they actually owe us double
what they overcharged. Done. No litigation. Over. You cannot do that. That is a penalty. And CMS, Center
for Medicare and Medicaid Studies, is able to do that only if Congress writes that bill. So we'll write it.
Yes, I'll be the first one to admit, I don't know all the details of Medicare Advantage, but that's
okay. But here's what I do know. I'm one of those type of guys, if I don't know the answer, I'll find
the answer. And I'll just be honest with you and I'll be direct with you. But here's what I do know
about Medicare. We would be in real trouble if we didn't have Medicare. You know, it was enacted,
let's see, back in,
64, 63, somewhere around there. 65, thank you, Doc. And it's been a blessing. So many people depend
on Medicare, including my parents, that help subsidize their private insurance or provide only healthcare
they have. So obviously going forward, I would support that policy wholeheartedly and Medicare Advantage
as well. Thank you.
My Medicare reform package eliminates it. I mean, it rolls A, B, and D into the primary Medicare, and
you don't pay anything if you make under $100,000 a year. Done deal. No Part C is even necessary. So
you heard his explanation, and it's complex. And we get hypnotized by the complexity.
My understanding of Medicare Advantage is that it's A and B, and then it has extra things in it that
other people like, right? And you mentioned that it's too capitalistic. I'm advocating for a government
system, but I actually believe in capitalism. Capitalism is a really powerful tool. It's like a chainsaw
that you can get a lot of productive work done, or you can cut your foot off with it if you're not paying
attention and controlling it the way you should.
right. And in medicine it doesn't belong. I think we're thinking too small. We keep coming back to we've
got these problems and we've got to do this first. Medicare didn't exist before 1964 and they fought
for it and they made a change and everything that is said about we can't move forward we can't do Medicare
for all because of this and because of that and because of the what about the insurance companies and
what about that. It's all been said before and they fixed it and they got Medicare.
Now it's Medicare for all. It's time. This will probably be the last question, because at 8.20 we will
conclude and then give two minutes for each foreclosing statement. All other, quote, comparable countries,
end quote, health care systems are built on a base of primary care physicians, a vanishing commodity
in the US.
How would you propose remedying this upside-down system we have of higher-priced specialty care? So
the question is, when we looked at the per capita cost for the U.S., it's almost twice the size of the
comparable countries, and it is suggesting that these comparable companies have an emphasis on primary care.
Whereas in the United States we have more specialists than primary care providers in part because the
specialists are highly compensated. Whereas primary care physicians are not as highly compensated. So
the question is how can we expand, I think the question essentially is how can we expand our base of
primary care physicians given the current reimbursement of higher payment for specialty care versus primary?
and training costs for throughout, at all levels for medical school through, okay, all right. Yeah,
okay, so that's, and throw in the cost of medical school, only an extra quarter million. No comment on that.
And obviously, the short answer is they're going to pay more, right? I mean, that's an easy one. But
I think the reality is we need to look at policies that support student loan forgiveness and or student
loan, low interest loans, right? We need to look at those policies to encourage folks to go into those
fields of primary care as opposed to cardiology or other. I mean, obviously, they're going to go in
those whatever they want. But we have to make it cost benefit for them.
to go into those fields. I mean, that's one thing. Obviously, if there's any regulatory hurdles, they're
probably not going to change much. I used to do Navy recruiting. I was a Navy officer recruiter. And
we used to assess doctors quite a bit. We used to come in the Navy. And they would basically serve.
We would pay for their medical school. And then after that, they'd go serve at the Navy.
But that was a great program because we would basically wipe away their medical debt, and then they
would go serve the Navy. So I'm advocating for the same type of policy for primary care. Thank you.
So it's a complex question, but simple. It could be simplified by bringing it up to two things. One
is burnout, and one is cost. So the cost of primary care education
is the same, similar to what I was just talking about about everybody else who's a working person right
now. It costs more to be a primary care physician than it does to make, that you make money as a primary
care physician for decades until you can get back into the black. And so I don't think it's forgiveness
for being a primary care.
In terms of loans, I just don't think you should pay for school if you are willing to be and sign up
to be a primary care doctor and then you dedicate yourself to it. Not only that, but burnout is a very
big deal. And I talked about prior authorization. I wish I had more time to tell you story after story
of coming out of a patient's room and kicking a chair because I'm so angry at what has happened with
the insurance company getting in the way of what that person needs. Again, we need to weaken these insurance companies
Prior authorization can be illegal. We can make that illegal through congressional election. Thank you.
So part of it is burnout and retirement, but also the pipeline coming in. Now, I'm not going to talk
about doctors. I'm going to talk about veterinarians for just a minute. 2,000 people applied to Purdue
to become vets, and they took 80.
Think about that. And the same type of thing happens with medicine. We definitely need the smartest
people we can to be doctors, right? I'm not saying that we should put a dunderhead in as a doctor, but
surely we can accept more and train more. And part of the healthcare system is to ensure that that pipeline
is there and robust. And we don't do that very well right now. Education for doctors shouldn't be so
burdensome.
$400,000 is a ridiculous number to go into debt. But it's a ridiculous number that all of our young
people are going through right now, and they're all experiencing debt, and they're all struggling. Education
is not the topic of this, but it's a huge thing that we need to fix for doctors and non-doctors. Honestly,
I don't have a solution. I will go with Tim Peck's solution. He's a doctor. He would know better than I.
I am highly paid for my specialty, so I really can't argue against paying somebody that obnoxious about
money to do something that nobody else can do. But there has to be a solution. I don't know what it
is, but there has to be one. Thanks. All right, that includes our Q&A. So each candidate will now have
two minutes
Let's take a 30 second breather. Just allow them to collect their thoughts in a minute. Each candidate
will have two minutes to give a closing statement. We'll give you a minute or two to put that together
in your head a little bit. Any other comments anyone would like to make in the interim? Anything we
really haven't done yet? You know, I could not grab the mic at some point. And thanks to Pam for keeping time.
Thanks for everybody to come out tonight. I think there's something like 64 people in the room. I'm
counting you Katz guys as well. Thanks to Katz for coming and filming all of this. Thanks for you candidates
for coming. Thanks to Mark Bauman. Let's give a big hand for Mark Bauman. I worked so hard to try to
make this event really comprehensive and useful and fair and whatnot.
Thanks to my wife Karen Greenstone in the back there. Karen, really, she was the one who said, we've
done this before. We should do it again. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'll take it on. And so
thank you so much. And this is a great crowd. I hope people have learned something. And OK, let's put
them up. We'll put their feet to the fire right now. There's their last chance.
Thank you. Kyle, is that okay if we start with you and work down this way? Okay. So yeah, once again,
thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to speak this evening. I just wanted to kind of focus
in on, you know, I'm going to fight for our folks here in the 9th congressional district, no matter
what, whether it's healthcare, wages, grocery prices, gas prices,
I'm going to try to make your lives a little easier. Am I going to promise you a Rose Garden and a French
latte and ice cream? No. I'm just going to get real on what we can deliver. And I believe it's going
to be tough to win this one. It will be tough. No question about it. Even if all the Democrats come
out, we've still got to pull in 20% of the voters of independence. But I think we can do that with the
right candidate and that centrist view that I have.
I'm ex-Navy, ex-blue collar. I put myself through college. I, you know, got four kids, raised in Indiana,
went to Purdue, of course. So did, so did Brad too, so. And I took on this opportunity because I'm deeply
worried about this country. I am, I'm deeply worried about this fall in terms of the election chaos.
And I want to try to help our people.
It's that simple. I can't emphasize it anymore. Some people ask why to do it, because I don't want to
live my life with regrets. I want to say I've done everything to help our people, either with health
care costs, ensuring democracy exists, ensuring a better life for children's future. It's that simple.
And if I could secure your vote, I would really appreciate that.
And please go out and vote November 5th. And please reach out and look me up on my website. And I appreciate
your vote. Thank you. So families are falling behind. It costs too much to work. And we need to focus
on that in order to relate to everybody across this district.
But we also need to focus on the fact that our rights are being infringed everywhere. That includes
our reproductive rights. That includes our First Amendment rights, our very right to live when it comes
to immigration reform. It also includes healthcare. Healthcare is a right. It is something that we can
relate to people on and saying your right is being infringed. It has been taken away from you. Don't
you want it back? But you need someone
who actually can talk to those people who had it taken away. I live amongst those people. I knock on
their doors, but I also see them in the bank. I see them in the Dollar General. We don't have a grocery
store anymore. We have a desert there, too. And so these conversations are live. They're real. And they
actually bring me a ton of hope right now. I think this district
is not only winnable, this district is something we can take back for years. Because not only can we
relate to all these people who are hurting and give them solutions, but then we can execute on those
solutions, hold these insurance companies accountable. Make sure everybody has healthcare by
first controlling these costs and getting to that point. We can do this only if we do this together
And I ask you to come out with me, knock those doors, make those phone calls. We can only do it together.
And if we do, we will take back this district. Thank you. Well, we're hypnotized by complexity and we're
told to go slow. The consequences are real. And you heard this.
People are dying six years earlier. We have high infant mortality for children. And 70% of medical debt,
bankruptcies, 70% are related to medical debt. And those people have insurance. Now, I'm not a doctor,
but I'm an engineer. And I spent my career on project management and system design. And this system,
this is a systems problem. And the system is the problem.
The conclusion is clear. We need single payer health care. We have to stop dinking around. Sorry for
the strong language. We have to stop dinking around with this. What's holding us back is psychology
and it's fear. We can address it by reducing risk and doing it in a controlled way. Even when we get
Medicare for all, it's going to be attacked and undermined because those forces are never going to stop
attacking no matter what we do.
And we've seen it with the Affordable Care Act, right? They made big improvements. You saw
the big improvements here. It cut the uninsured in half, and then they undercut it. And they undermined
it. And they tried 100 times in Congress and 60 times in the Senate to eliminate it entirely. And they're
going to do it again to any improvements that we make into this system. The system is the contamination.
That's why I'm advocating for a constitutional amendment
for health care. Because health care, let's be honest, it's not a right. It sounds good, it feels good,
we wish it was, but it is not a right. And that's why they can take it away from it. That's why they
were able to take away a woman's right to choose. That's why they're able to undercut. That's why they're
able to push down and try to make it harder to get care, because it's not a right. And until we make
it a constitutional right, they will always undermine it. I'm proposing big changes because
We have big problems, and we can do it. Yeah, I won't be on the primary ballot with these guys in May.
It's May, right? But I'll be on the general election ballot. And I have solved all these problems.
I don't really see how difficult it is. I know I'm not gonna win. I encourage you to visit my website
at floyd2026.com and look at the legislation because it's all there, it's all been solved,
it's all written, it's all analyzed. And if you want a few moments of humor, I wrote a fictional story
about what happens if I actually do win.
To conclude quickly, here's a couple key dates up here we've projected. If you want to vote in absentee
or mail-in ballot, that request deadline is April 23rd. That request has to be in by then. The absentee
or mail-in ballot must be returned by the primary election day, May 5th. Early voting begins April 7th,
all the way up to the day before, so we're there. And the May primary election is May 5th.
So please get all your friends and family to get out and vote and vote multiple times, right? One quick
plug is that a week from tonight on the 14th at 530 at the Monroe County Library, the concerned scientists
of IU are sponsoring these same folks to come and talk about the environment in a similar format as this.
Thank you all for coming and good night.