If elected, I would be the poorest member of Congress—and the world’s richest man just attacked me in a 3 a.m. tweet for supporting universal health care.
You might have seen a clip of me on CNN last week, debating with Scott Jennings on whether health care is a basic human right. In that clip, Jennings—a longtime Republican strategist and pro-Trump contributor at CNN—asks, “Even illegals?” To which I respond, “Every single person in the world deserves health care.… How is this controversial?”
It shouldn’t be controversial. And I’m not afraid to say that as a person or as a congressional candidate.
The state of our country’s health care has been front and center for many Americans over the last few weeks, as President Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” threatens health care coverage for 11 million people—including thousands of families right here in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, where I am running. Why? So Republicans can slash taxes for the ultrarich, decimate oversight for AI, and spend $125 billion on a “Golden Dome,” which will make America less safe—all for the low, low price of workers’ health, food, and clean air.
Our health care system is one of the worst in the developed world. Medical debt is the cause of 66 percent of bankruptcies in the U.S. In Canada, the runner-up in this bleak competition, that number is 19 percent. We spend more on health care than any other wealthy country and yet have the worst outcomes. We take Ubers instead of ambulances, take fish antibiotics instead of prescriptions, and often skip medical treatment altogether because of the expected cost.
These hardships are uniquely American.
In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights to Congress, encouraging legislators to enshrine into law additional rights not already enumerated in the Constitution. His proposals were prescient, reflecting trials many Americans face today: the right to earn a decent living, the right to trade free of monopolies, the right to education. He also said that every American should be guaranteed “the right to medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.” Congress did not pass it.
It’s been more than 80 years since FDR proposed his Second Bill of Rights, and health care is still not a legal right for any American. While the Affordable Care Act made progress on this front, treatment and prescription costs are still expensive, insurance bureaucracy is still predatory, and most Americans’ coverage is still tied to their employment. I lost my own health insurance for over a year when I was laid off last May. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would continue the death by a thousand cuts approach to the ACA that Republicans have pushed every time they’re in power.
Donald Trump and the Republicans want to make this worse. By creating even more hoops for Americans to jump through just to get care that is often lackluster, by demonizing the poor, and by insisting health care is something you must earn, this administration is bragging about its own inhumanity. When I said, “Every person in the world deserves health care,” Jennings couldn’t fathom that idea. His first instinct was to blurt out, “Even illegals?”
The answer is yes. If you are a person, you deserve health care, no matter where you are or who you are. No one deserves to die because they can’t afford insulin or because they’re too scared of bankruptcy to seek medical attention. If you show up at my doorstep starving or injured, I am not going to ask for papers before I help you.
Conservatives struggle with this idea. Elon Musk seems to think this idea and my comments are “suicidal empathy.” Illinois Republicans were so incensed that my campaign office stocks food, clothes, and other resources for whoever needs them that they thought I was somehow breaking the law.
But in most other wealthy countries, this mindset is barbaric. In much of the rest of the world, if you need care, you get it. In fact, I have needed to see an emergency doctor in three foreign countries since I was a kid and all of those visits cost less than any urgent care clinic visit I’ve had in the United States.
But when you say any of this, the Republican instinct is to ask, “How will we pay for this?” The answer is pretty simple, and we’ve known it for a long time.
Universal, single-payer health care—a system where our tax dollars pay for our health care without the private insurance middleman—would actually save us money and lead to better health outcomes. We’d save lives, reduce waste, and guarantee a baseline of human dignity. Of course, predatory insurance companies would lose the ability to profit off our basic existence, but that’s a sacrifice we should all be willing to make.
One of the main reasons I’m running for Congress is because our leaders have conditioned us into thinking we don’t deserve good things, especially if we aren’t rich. But we do. You do.
Every American deserves to afford housing, groceries, and health care with money left over to save and spend. We deserve to thrive, not just survive. And every single human being in every single country deserves to know that they can find the help they need on the worst day of their lives, when they are at their weakest and most vulnerable.
For most Americans, this concept isn’t hard to grasp, but when it comes to Elon Musk and right-wing pundits, they simply can’t fathom having even an ounce of basic humanity.
