James Talarico

I don't even know if I'd ever had my blood sugar tested before.

And they told me a normal blood sugar is 100 or lower, and mine was 900.

So I was in a state of diabetic ketoacidosis, which leads to coma and death without insulin.

and I was in the ICU for three days.

When I got out, I went to Walgreens to pick up my first 30-day supply of insulin, this new medicine that I now needed to live, and it cost me $684 for a 30-day supply.

And I didn't have that kind of money, still don't have that kind of money.

And so I put it on a credit card.

And many Texans with diabetes face the same kind of cost pressure.

Some of them ration, some of them skip doses entirely, and some of them die because of that.

and so when i won that race and i got elected the state house i was able to bring democrats and republicans together to take on big pharma because the reason insulin costs so much is because big pharma has a chokehold on our healthcare system in this country they it's basically three companies that that own the entire global insulin market and they move their prices together they it's a it's a monopoly

and they jack up prices to maximize their profits.

And so we came together in the State House.

We beat Big Pharma and their lobbyists by capping the cost of insulin at $25 per prescription in the state of Texas.

And that is, I think, the kind of action that people want to see on all these issues, but particularly health care, because it's so personal.

And so not only should we cap the cost of more lifesaving drugs, not only should we reverse the cuts made to the ACA, which impacts Texas more than any other state because we have refused to expand Medicaid here in Texas.

So a lot of folks rely on these subsidies and on these exchanges.

But I think we should go one step further and we should allow every single Texan, every single American, regardless of their age, the chance to join Medicare.

And I think if we did that, not only could we provide universal coverage, we could also provide competition in this marketplace and drive down the cost of private insurance as well.

And if we can do that, if we can provide that opportunity to join Medicare while still honoring people's free choice and their ability to choose their health care and their health insurance coverage, I think it is a solution that could transform our broken health care system in this state and in this country.

That's a tricky question for a policy wonk, but I have done a ton of work at the state level on bringing down costs.