How does it make sense to send people five hundred dollars when you've raised their deductibles by thousands and thousands, three, four, five, ten thousand dollars?

Well, it doesn't, except in this context.

They have their backs against the political wall.

I mean, they are heading to massive defeat in this election.

And it's because they broke every promise they made when they ran for office, Republicans and Trump in 2024.

They were going to help people.

They were going to lower costs.

How can politics fix this mess? What can we do politically to change this nightmare for people like the folks in Texas?

Yeah.

In Maine, and, and, and led, you know, ostensibly led the whole time, and then, you know, Susan Collins walked away with it and won by a very, by a very comfortable margin.

So, you know, I think it can't, you know, winning campaigns is not about polls.

I mean, polls, you know, give you a guide and, you know, give you information, but do the fucking work.

Do, do the work.

And look, when we're in the comms business, we're always talking about expectations.

Like, like we wanna set the right expectations.

That was me.

How do you see the politics around health care right now?

It's been a wonderful, wonderful experience.

When you start doing health care advocacy and, you know, and politics and look, I'm a political animal.

If health care was the 10th best issue for Democrats, I would still think that health care is a really important public policy issue.

But I'd have a little harder time.

One of the things that really gets me up in the morning about health care issue is that it has such political saliency.

We need more donors to think that it has the political saliency.

We ought to use your particular issue, which is a really key one in this.

packages it and makes it look real pretty though, I noticed.

Which is a lot of what we've been doing so far on this.

Um, so we really need, we really need to make change and look, we, we did that.

I mean, we, we made 2018 healthcare election, 2019 and 2020, uh, Nancy Pelosi and Democrats passed a lot of legislation that languished in the Senate that Mitch McConnell was in charge of and Donald Trump was president.

And then, you know, Joe Biden won and we got, we got some stuff done.

We got the premium tax credits, uh, in place.

We got the lower prescription drug prices through Medicare.

So what do you need from ordinary Wisconsinites, not politicians, not advocates, not people like us, but regular people to turn this around? How do regular people, somebody who's listening to this right now, what can they do to help fix this problem?

What are you doing?"

Well, absolutely.

Healthcare should be a bipartisan issue.

And by the way, if you look at all the polls on the Affordable, uh, Care Act tax credits, on Medicaid, on lowering prescription, uh, drug prices, across the board, uh, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents support policies that lower costs and, uh, and expand coverage.

But, you know, Republicans in the big ugly bill that they passed, you know, this summer, they did it through reconciliation, didn't need any, uh, Democratic votes, they hijacked American healthcare to pay for, uh, tax cuts, uh, for, for billionaires.

Democrats have a little leverage here.

Also, they should be consulted in the appropriations process.

It's like, "Ugh, get away." [laughs]

What are you doing?"

Well, absolutely.

Health care should be a bipartisan issue.

And by the way, if you look at all the polls on the Affordable, uh, Care Act tax credits, on Medicaid, on p- lowering prescription, uh, drug prices, across the board, uh, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents support policies that lower cost and, uh, and expand coverage.

But, you know, Republicans and the big ugly bill that they passed, you know, this summer, they did it through reconciliation, didn't need any, uh, Democratic votes.

They hijacked American health care to pay for, uh, tax cuts, uh, for, for billionaires.

Democrats have a little leverage here.

(laughs)