Alison Friedman
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

Baseball. Apple Pie. Worrying about health care.

For too long, that’s been our common American experience.

Sometimes it’s about balancing the risks of what could go wrong against the costs of protecting against it.

Or a lump. Or which medically necessary medications are just too expensive. Or which medically unnecessary — but highly profitable — medications start a spiral into opioid addiction and what to do now.

And this week, again, our body politic took aim not just at our own bodies but those of our loved ones.

“Repeal Not Replace” is as craven a political move as I have ever seen. It is an explicit statement that the concerns of 32 million Americans — 40,000 of them Northern Virginians — who would lose support in confronting these unimaginable and all too common crises do not matter.

They matter to me.

Honest people of good conscience can disagree about the best approach. I get that health care is too expensive, that our current options don’t serve everyone they need to, and that pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in profits, often times by pushing products that make us sicker rather than healthier. There is real work to be done, meaningful solutions to offer, and more that we can create together.

I believe any proposal on health care should have to answer three fundamental questions:

  • How will it impact people?
  • How much will it cost?
  • And what will be the process for implementation?

We’ll never be able to stop sickness or injustice, but we have a choice whether our actions thwart or compound it. All my life, I have worked to build solutions that don’t care what side of the aisle you come from but what good we can do together. All this Congress has evidenced is that political party is paramount to even our most fundamental values and experiences.

That’s wrong. I hope you’ll send me to Congress to fix it.

-Alison

P.S. You can help me get there by spreading the word on Facebook, following me on Twitter, donating to my campaign or emailing me your ideas and stories.

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Alison Friedman

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