Healthcare should be about care, not profit.
Our healthcare system is broken. Erik has been told by multiple providers that the current model isn’t sustainable. It is too expensive & too complicated.
Families are paying more in premiums, deductibles, copays, and prescription drug costs while still worrying about whether insurance will actually cover what they need. Rural communities depend on access to clinics, hospitals, providers, and mental health care. Doctors, nurses, and support staff are being asked to do more with less while too much money flows to insurance bureaucracy, drug company profits, executive pay, billing systems, and shareholder returns.
That is not a responsible healthcare system.
A responsible healthcare system should help people get care early, stay healthy, avoid financial ruin, and live with dignity.
Erik is running because we can do better.
Healthcare makes up 18% of our economy. It is a $5.3 trillion industry. We need to be honest about the need to get corporate money out of politics before we can bring about systemic change. That is why we have prioritized true campaign finance reform on this campaign. Click here to see that section.
Erik’s Priorities
Erik will fight to:
- Restore and protect Affordable Care Act subsidies so families do not lose coverage or face higher premiums
- Lower prescription drug costs and take on price-gouging by pharmaceutical companies
- Protect Medicare, Medicaid, and rural healthcare access
- Expand access to care in rural communities, including primary care, mental health care, dental care, and emergency services
- Lower the Medicare eligibility age, starting with a serious push toward age 55
- Reduce waste, bureaucracy, and administrative costs that do not improve patient care
- Support doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, and rural clinics
- Work toward a healthcare system where every American can get affordable, quality care regardless of their wealth
…by putting care back at the center of healthcare: protecting coverage, lowering drug costs, supporting rural hospitals and clinics, reducing waste and bureaucracy, and working toward a system where getting sick does not mean going broke.
Protect Coverage Now
Before we can build a better healthcare system, we need to stop making the current one worse.
Millions of Americans rely on Affordable Care Act marketplace plans to get health insurance. Enhanced ACA subsidies have helped lower premiums and keep coverage within reach for working families, small business owners, farmers, early retirees, and people who do not get insurance through an employer.
Erik supports restoring and protecting those subsidies.
If the subsidies expire or are cut back, families will pay more, and more people will become uninsured. That is the wrong direction.
Protecting coverage is step one.
Lower Prescription Drug Costs
No one should have to choose between filling a prescription and paying for groceries, utilities, or gas.
Americans pay too much for prescription drugs, and the people profiting from that system are too often not the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and healthcare workers providing care.
Erik supports lowering drug costs, increasing transparency, strengthening competition, and giving the federal government more power to negotiate fair prices when taxpayer dollars are involved.
Medicine only works if people can afford to take it.
Support Rural Healthcare
Healthcare in Western Minnesota is often measured in miles.
It is the drive to the nearest clinic. The wait for an appointment. The ambulance route. The hospital that cannot find enough staff. The mental health provider who is booked months out.
Erik believes rural healthcare needs real federal support.
That means protecting rural hospitals and clinics, investing in workforce recruitment and retention, expanding telehealth where it helps, supporting emergency services, and making sure rural communities are not treated as an afterthought in national healthcare policy.
Access is not theoretical when the nearest care is an hour away.
Elevate the “Care” in Healthcare
Too much of our healthcare system is built around billing, denial, paperwork, profit, and delay.
That is not care.
Erik believes healthcare policy should be judged by whether it helps patients get the care they need, whether it supports the people providing that care, and whether it makes the system easier and more affordable to use.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, home health workers, mental health professionals, support staff, and caregivers should be able to focus on patients — not fight a system designed to wear people down.
We need to put care back at the center.
Reduce Waste and Bureaucracy
The United States spends more on healthcare than any other wealthy nation, yet too many people still cannot afford care, cannot find care, or cannot get insurance to cover care when they need it.
That tells us something is broken.
A lot of healthcare spending never reaches patients. Too much goes to administrative complexity, billing systems, insurance overhead, middlemen, executive compensation, and profit-taking.
Erik supports reducing waste and bureaucracy so more healthcare dollars go where they belong: to patients, providers, rural clinics, hospitals, and actual care.
Expand Access Through Medicare
Medicare is one of the most important and trusted healthcare programs in the country.
Erik supports protecting Medicare and exploring ways to expand access, including lowering the eligibility age toward 55.
That would help many older workers, early retirees, farmers, small business owners, and people in physically demanding jobs who are not yet eligible for Medicare but often face higher healthcare costs and fewer affordable coverage options.
Lowering the age would not solve every problem in healthcare, but it would be a meaningful step toward broader access.
Work Toward Universal, Affordable Care
Erik believes every American should be able to get affordable, quality healthcare.
He is open to serious conversations about the best way to get there, including single-payer models, Medicare for All, public options, and other approaches that expand access and lower costs.
But he also believes we need to be honest: there is no easy answer, and transforming a system this large will not happen overnight.
Healthcare is one of the largest and most complex parts of the American economy. Anyone who pretends there is a simple switch to flip is not being straight with people.
Erik’s approach is clear: protect coverage now, lower costs now, strengthen rural care now, and keep working toward a system where healthcare is affordable and accessible for every American.
Make Healthcare a Priority
This is not really a question of whether America can afford better healthcare.
It is a question of priorities.
If Washington can find money for tax breaks, corporate giveaways, bailouts, and wars, it can find the will to make healthcare work better for the people who actually live here.
Erik believes working families, seniors, farmers, small business owners, veterans, and rural communities should not be left to navigate a broken system on their own.
Healthcare should help people live.
It should not bankrupt them.
Take Mental Health Seriously
Mental health is health. It belongs in this conversation.
Across Western Minnesota, the demand for mental health care has grown significantly while the system built to meet it has not kept pace. Providers are booked months out. Many communities have no psychiatrist within reasonable driving distance. School counselors are stretched thin. Too often, the only available response to a mental health crisis is a law enforcement call or an emergency room visit that was not designed to help.
That is not a system. That is a gap.
Mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction are medical conditions. They respond to treatment when people can access it. The stigma around seeking help has kept too many people from getting care they need and deserve. Getting treatment is not a sign of weakness. It is how people get better.
Erik believes mental health care deserves the same urgency and the same investment as any other form of healthcare. That means expanding provider capacity in rural communities, using telehealth to close the distance gap, strengthening substance abuse treatment, supporting school-based mental health services, and protecting the Medicaid coverage that serves as the primary payer for mental health care for many rural Minnesotans.
The mental health crisis is also a workforce crisis, a public safety crisis, and a community health crisis. When people cannot get the care they need, the consequences ripple outward into families, schools, workplaces, and local services. Investing in mental health is not a social program. It is a community investment with returns that touch every part of rural life.
Western Minnesota cannot afford to keep treating mental health as an afterthought. Neither can Washington.
Erik Wants to Hear From You
Healthcare affects every family in Western Minnesota.
Erik wants to hear what is happening in your life — the bills, the drives, the denials, the delays, the prescription costs, and the care you or your family need.