James Talarico

I just mentioned the cost of insulin.

Right after I got that bill passed, I passed a Bernie Sanders idea through the Texas legislature, which is not an easy thing to do.

It was a bill to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, where they pay half what Americans pay for the same medications.

And I introduced the bill because I was trying to mostly make a point.

I didn't think it was actually going to go anywhere.

But then a friend of mine on the other side of the aisle, actually a member of the Freedom Caucus, so a very far right Republican, he called me up and he's like, I just read your bill and I think it's great.

And I think it will really provide a disruption to the monopoly Big Pharma has because he believes in free markets.

And so that wasn't necessarily the reason I filed the bill.

I filed the bill because I think people shouldn't die because they can't afford their health care.

But whatever his reasons, we both supported the same policy.

So we got it passed to the House.

We got it passed to the Senate.

We got signed by the governor.

Now Texas is working on its application to the FDA to start importing these cheaper medications wholesale right here at home.

And I've done that work on other issues, child care, which is, if you're asking what a dream policy would look like for me at the federal level,

it would probably be universal, high quality, early childhood education for every single kid in this country.

One, as an educator, I think it could be a game changer.

Those first thousand days of a child's life, those first three years, that is when the architecture of the brain is being built.

And we as a society are really nowhere to be seen.

And it's something crazy, like a thousand neural connections are being formed every second in that period of a child's life.