Sara Rodriguez: Why a Nurse-Turned-Politician Is Wisconsin’s (Healthcare) Answer

I spoke to this woman up in Northern Wisconsin who was married and they made like a hundred or $200 more than the cutoff for Medicaid.

Wow.

So she quite literally got a divorce from her husband of decades, right?

Like 30 years so that she could qualify for the healthcare that she needed.

She called it living in sin for healthcare.

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lierly Show.

I am really excited about this one, you guys, because I have got Sarah Rodriguez here with me right now.

Not only is she the current sitting lieutenant governor, but she's a nurse.

She's a former CDC epidemic.

intelligence service officer.

We're going to get into that.

She is a candidate for governor, the leading candidate you might say at this point in the race for governor.

Sarah and I did this a few months back and I want to invite you to check that episode out on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

But today we are going to focus on

Healthcare because I'm a doctor and she's a nurse and there's so much happening with the health care It's at the core of the affordability crisis Across the US right now, but there are special things about what's happening in Wisconsin and nuances that we need to get into so Why don't we just get right into it Sarah Rodriguez?

Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me I

am so honored that you are taking time out of your crazy busy schedule because the campaign is really heating up right now So every moment is

precious.

It is what?

five weeks?

39 days.

39 days.

39 days until the primary and then a race to the general in November, which is exciting.

I am really excited about it because your opponent, Tom Tiffany, has voted with Donald Trump 100% of the time.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is a guy who is just not good for Wisconsin.

And I think with the Fourth of July and all of the sadness that we are seeing out of Washington DC, we are really, as a people, recognizing how far off this administration is.

And Tom Tiffany is part of that.

So this is exciting.

Yeah, he is voted for every little bit of the Trump's horrible agenda.

I mean, he is there's no daylight between those two men.

No, but.

let's not like let's not go there let's focus on you because we've known each other for a while we actually filed our papers at the same time back in 2020 when we were both running for assembly i want people to understand what that moment was like for you you were a nurse and you decided to step up and say i have to do this why

Yeah, it was 2019-2020 during the chaos of the first Trump administration when we were getting all sorts of misinformation and disinformation from our leadership here in Wisconsin about COVID.

I know for you, running as a physician, it was very similar.

It was so frustrating to see that coming out of leaders in the state.

Our Assembly and Senate hadn't met.

for like eight months when people needed leadership in this state.

You had mentioned I'd been an epidemic intelligence service officer, did national, international outbreak investigations.

I know how dangerous it is when we get misinformation from our leadership and at the end of the day more people were going to get sick and more people were going to die if we could not get them the type of leadership that they needed.

So that's when I decided to come off the sidelines and run for assembly.

District 13 includes parts included parts of Waukesha and Milwaukee County and was able to flip that district from red to blue with a four-term Republican incumbent because I wanted to bring that

nursing expertise, that public health expertise into the assembly.

Let's talk about the public health piece because this is something that I don't hear enough about and it is really important, especially now we're hearing about what's happening with Ebola, with the destruction of USAID, all of the things that are happening internationally.

You've been there.

When Hurricane Katrina happened,

You were there tell us about your experience as an EIS officer and how that plays into what you're doing right now

So yeah, I was on the first plane that landed in New Orleans commercial plane that landed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

All of the hotels were closed because of the flooding.

So we ended up staying on a Navy ship that was there parked in the harbor so we could set up those surveillance systems that we needed for the New Orleans area as well as try to map out all of the different places that had had damage.

The CDC worked at that time.

And now what you're looking at from the CDC is that it is not working.

So all of these cuts that Trump and Tiffany have done across the federal government, it has absolutely decimated the expertise at the Centers for Disease Control.

So I'll give you an example.

Milwaukee Public Schools found that they had led in their schools.

They wanted to get help from the CDC.

That's the kind of things that epidemic intelligence service officers would do.

They are a force to be able to come

all across the country, all across the world, to be there when they're needed.

And the CDC basically came back and said, we fired all of our lead experts.

We no longer have them.

You're on your own.

They started this project.

And then in the middle of it, they fired everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They just fired everybody.

And that's what's so upsetting to me, particularly as a clinician, and I know you know this too, is that when we talk

to patients when we talk to folks, we always say, you know, you have to go to trusted sources to be able to get your information and we would all consistently point to the CDC.

Now, providers are a little scared to point to the CDC.

Why would we?

Because all of that information is flawed now.

It used to be gold standard and now it comes with an asterisk and it's just not, we know that we can't rely on it.

Yeah, and that is so.

We were the one that every other country in the world modeled themselves after.

That's what the CDC was.

And now we see what happens.

When science runs into rhetoric, science wins, right?

You've seen that on the Army base where they did not require flu vaccines.

Well, guess what?

all of those, so many of those recruits, huge flu outbreak where some of them were hospitalized.

And there is

one potential death as well.

I mean, that's what happens when science runs into rhetoric.

And so we have to make sure that we've got the right leadership in Wisconsin.

And that includes making sure that we do not elect Tom Tiffany as our governor because he has supported everything the Trump administration has done.

whether that is supporting these cuts to healthcare that we know are actually even coming, more cuts are coming to healthcare after the midterms, whether that is cuts to childcare, cuts to education, completely eliminating the education department.

I mean, that's the kind of thing that Tiffany supports and we just, we can't afford to have that in Wisconsin.

And as a public health officer and somebody who understands the social determinants of health, healthcare isn't just going to see your doctor getting a prescription.

Healthcare is all of the other stuff, the clean air, the clean water, not having lead in your water.

All of these things contribute to our ability to live healthy lives.

Ah, okay, let's talk about.

the Governor's Task Force on Healthcare Workforce.

This is something that you chair.

We've got a huge real crisis here across the state.

Provider shortages burn out.

Rural hospitals, rural folks are really suffering here.

What's the diagnosis?

What did you come up with?

And what does the prescription actually look like?

Yeah, I was very proud to chair the Healthcare Workforce Task Force because we know that we are short clinicians today.

It is not sometime in the future.

It is not sometime, you know, where we're gonna have to address this.

We have to address it now.

We are short, you know, 30,000 nurses basically in the state of Wisconsin.

I mean, and that affects everybody because you're not gonna be able to get the care that you need.

I remember when I was an ER nurse and I would have one more patient wheeled in.

and that panic in the pit of my stomach where I wasn't sure that I could take care of them in the way that they deserved.

And the shortage is even worse than it was when I was working clinically within that emergency department.

So I can't imagine how stretched then these clinicians are.

So one of the things that we talked about within the Health Care Workforce Task Force is making it easier for people to get into the field, expanding apprenticeship models within the state.

We are one of the first states to offer an apprenticeship model for nursing, which I think is

really,

really interesting.

Basically taking certified nursing assistants, paying for full-time benefits, full-time wages, paying for their time in class, and they will be able to graduate in four years with an associate's degree in nursing with no debt.

And as somebody who is turning 51 in a month and may or may not have just paid off my student loans.

Wow, yes.

That's pretty awesome, right?

Yeah.

But that is one of the barriers that we have for people getting into the field, particularly non-traditional students, is they have to take themselves out of the workforce to be able to get that extra training, and they just simply can't do it.

They're already stretched thin.

I mean, we know that because, you know, the Republicans let a bunch of stuff expire at the end of this last legislative session.

We were helping with childcare.

The Republican-led legislature let those subsidies expire, right?

You know, so now childcare is more expensive for folks.

So if they're already stretched then they can't take themselves out of the workforce to be able to get additional education.

That's just one of the things that we address within the healthcare workforce task force.

But it also looks at how do we make sure we stabilize those rural healthcare systems?

We've already seen some close.

And

we know that the cuts that are coming after the midterms are going to affect our rural hospital systems way more than our urban and suburban systems because they rely so much on Medicaid and Medicare.

So if we don't have some sort of stabilization to put a bandaid on what Trump and Tom Tiffany have broken, we are going to see more rural hospitals close.

I think the number I saw recently was one in eight hospitals are at risk of closing.

This is really scary stuff and we haven't even experienced the cuts that the HR won, the one big beautiful bill

will be

bringing down the pike.

So all of those consequences are coming and it's about to get really scary.

Yeah.

One other thing that we have been kicking down the road for a long time is Medicaid expansion.

Here in Wisconsin, we've been leaving Medicaid expansion money on the table since 2014 over a decade.

And the Republicans who are blocking it have essentially sent billions of dollars to other states, while our rural hospitals especially are struggling to stay open.

Why hasn't this happened yet?

And in light of the changes at the federal level, is it still worth pursuing this Medicaid expansion package?

now.

So I basically, it's like we've set billions of dollars on fire.

I mean, that's what we've done as a state by not passing this for so long.

We have set billions of dollars on fire.

And, you know, I spoke to this woman up in Northern Wisconsin, who she was on Medicaid, right, or Badger Care as we call it in Wisconsin.

was married and they made like a hundred or two hundred dollars more than the cutoff for Medicaid.

Wow.

So she quite literally got a divorce from her husband of decades right like 30 years so that she could qualify for the health care that she needed.

She called it living in sin for health care right.

Yes.

I just it

It's insane to me that in the richest country in the world, that I continually come across these stories, that people have to make sacrifices between their health care and putting food on the table, their health care and a roof over their heads.

That should not happen.

We should be able to have a system that works for everybody.

Part of my plan as governor is to expand Medicaid.

And you're right.

That big, ugly bill has now made it a lot more difficult for states that have not expanded to expand now.

If we would have done it last year, billions of dollars.

Now, we don't have that same fiscal...

basically bonus to be able to expand.

I still think it's the right thing to do.

I still think it's important for us to offer that and put the systems in place to make it as easy as possible for people to qualify for Medicaid.

And I get so frustrated, Kristen, when I hear the rhetoric from

Tom Tiffany and Trump about how there's people like playing video games and qualifying for Medicaid and oh my gosh.

So you've heard me tell this story before but my father worked every day of his life, served in the Navy during Vietnam, right?

He got diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

He worked on that Friday, got diagnosed with Alzheimer's on a Monday.

Like quite literally he has met his social obligation, right?

And you know as well as I do when dementia hits a family, it sucks every resource out of that family, right?

So at the end of his life, he qualified for Medicaid.

It is number one in my life, the most stressful thing I've ever had to do.

Wow.

To get him qualified.

I knew he qualified.

I'm a nurse.

I have two master's degrees.

I have a partner who is helpful to me, who can take over some things while I'm trying to manage this, right?

And it still was one of the hardest things I had to do.

So that rhetoric about how it's so easy to get on Medicaid is absolute BS.

It is so difficult to qualify.

And it honestly, if I was somebody else, I probably would have given up.

If I was working two jobs trying to make ends meet and just trying to get, you know, food on the table, keeping my head above water, all of the hoops I had to jump through to get him qualified, I don't know that I would have been able to jump through those hoops.

And so that's what really angers me is that it's the vast majority of people who are on Medicaid or Badger Care in Wisconsin are children and people over the age of 65.

Yeah.

And 40% of our pregnant moms.

Yeah.

40% of babies are born on Medicaid in Wisconsin.

And that was one tiny little bright light that came out of this last legislative session is that we got 12 months postpartum covered in Wisconsin.

There were only two states left that hadn't done it, us in Arkansas.

At least we weren't the last state, right?

But it took so much to try to get the Republicans to acknowledge that this is something that was needed for new moms within the state.

I'm so glad you brought that up because as an OBGYN doctor, I am so angry that it took us seven years to do this and that Republicans were the barrier that they literally just refused to bring it to the floor and you were there in the assembly when this was happening and here's the part that really gets me.

Now they're campaigning on it like they're some sort of heroes.

Like they were the ones with the capes who made this happen for these women.

How many women died and suffered in those seven

years where they were saying, no, I just don't care because I'd rather play politics than actually let you have the health care that you need, the life-saving health care that you need.

That is, it is infuriating.

It's infuriating that that's what they do.

And that's why we have to make sure it's clear that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans in this election cycle, particularly coming up for governor.

Yeah.

You want to make sure that you have somebody who's going to look out for everyday Wisconsinites.

And that's my plan for healthcare is a public option on the exchange that everybody can buy into that has a required premium reduction annually.

It's based off of the Colorado model expansion of Medicaid.

Let's let's make sure people get the care that they need and rural health stabilization funds.

because, again, we are going to have rural hospitals close if we don't do something about it in the state of Wisconsin.

And what's Tom Tiffany's plan?

utter silence?

I don't know.

It's been crickets from the Republicans

for years.

It's been crickets.

It's been crickets for years.

He continually votes with Trump on all of these things to rip away health care from every day Wisconsinites.

And people are going to feel it.

People are going to feel the effects of these bills as they already have when they took away the tax credits for the premiums on the exchange.

I talked to somebody in La Crosse who basically said, you know what?

My premiums have doubled.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope nothing happens.

Yeah.

If you can't afford your premiums and you've got a high deductible plan, you also can't afford your plan.

No.

So many people are entirely skipping healthcare because they just can't afford any piece of it anymore.

And that is a cascade because people then will go to the emergency department too late.

They can't pay for their care, so they end up suffering financially.

The hospital can't pay for the care.

They end up suffering financially, and they then pass the costs back to us.

They

raise prices.

So if you think that, oh, I've got my employer plan.

It's fine.

It's been consistent for this period of time.

This is going to affect.

every single one of us in the state of Wisconsin because if there is more uncompensated care, which is exactly what exactly what you talked about, it's not going to be covered by insurance and people, you know how much you've probably seen an emergency room bill.

I mean, it's insane to me how expensive it is.

If people, most people can't afford that.

So then that's going to sit on the bottom line of the hospital systems.

And so they raise prices for everybody.

Everything gets more expensive.

Right?

Yeah.

It's just not working.

We know it and it's going to get worse, which means that we have a lot of work to do here.

We have a lot of work to do.

Yes.

Okay.

There is a version of this race.

Back to the governor's race.

There

is a version of this race where somebody looks at your resume and says CDC officer.

Okay nurse sure health system executive uh-huh lieutenant governor but then they ask why didn't you just stay in healthcare and fix it from that perspective and let somebody else deal with the politics what would you say to that person

you know um there aren't as many clinicians in politics I think because of that sort of perspective

And

in fact, when I become governor, I will be the first nurse ever elected governor in the United States.

Oh, wow.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Yeah.

I think that's, A, I think it's pretty cool.

But B, it also shows that clinicians don't necessarily run for office at the same rate as maybe lawyers do or other folks do.

And we need to get involved.

We need to get involved because every single policy that comes out of Washington DC, every single policy that comes out of the state government directly affects our patients.

And we do not have the luxury of sitting on those sidelines and letting people from Madison or DC dictate how we are going to take care of patients.

We have to get involved in the policy and that could be from many different angles.

personally believe running for office with as complicated as healthcare is, is the way that I can be helpful.

But also I would encourage clinicians to work with their professional organizations to push for policy that they know helps patients.

Those are the kind of things we need to do as clinicians and we cannot take care of our patients properly unless we address the big systemic policy issues that we have at the state and the federal level.

Politicians have been interfering with our health care as patients, as providers, as public health professionals.

We have to push back from the health care perspective.

If we don't, they just continue to railroad us and we have worse outcomes as a result.

You've mentioned a few times about how you differentiate yourself from Tom Tiffany, but I want to give you the opportunity

to say it directly to Wisconsinites.

And I'll set you up like this.

Tom Tiffany has voted to gut Medicaid.

He has opposed ACA protections and his entire healthcare record is essentially let the market sort it out.

You are a nurse who has worked night shifts in the emergency department.

You've been an EIS officer.

You've been a healthcare executive.

What do Wisconsin voters need to know is the difference between you and Tom Tiffany on healthcare?

The difference between myself and Tom Tiffany is that I actually have a plan.

I have a plan to lower health care costs across the state.

I have a plan to protect the most vulnerable in the state of Wisconsin.

I have a plan to make sure that physicians and nurses can take care of the patients in the way that they know is in the best interests of patient care.

Tom Tiffany?

No plan.

There is nothing that he has put out there that is helpful to Wisconsinites that lowers one dollar of healthcare costs in Wisconsin.

consistently voting to strip away health care from people, consistently voting to not help our rural hospital systems.

That's the difference between the two of us is that I am going to relentlessly work to lower costs for Wisconsinites with actual plans that are going to work while he's just going to throw up his hands in the air and say well it's too complicated so I'm going to do nothing about it.

And let's be clear, he has a record, both federally and in the state government.

This is not a secret.

Tom Tiffany is not invested in the health care of Wisconsinites.

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

And we didn't mention this before, but let's talk about his reproductive health care stance.

You're an OBGYN.

He has been very extreme on the bills that he has supported for reproductive health care, particularly abortion.

He has supported a six-week ban with no exceptions, except for the life of the mother.

The life of the mother.

Where

is that

line?

Where does that line happen?

And you and I both know.

There's no black line there.

Everything is great.

Everything is about choices in health care and about risk.

And to no exceptions for rape, no exceptions for incest, no exceptions if you have a non-viable pregnancy, these types of legislation we know when other states have implemented them, women and babies die.

Yes, because of that and we have multiple examples of how that's happened and so These are the risks for this coming election and we have to make sure that people are voting understanding the real risks to their lives and their livelihoods

Yes, I'm so glad you brought that up.

You predicted my next question.

But it's, I mean, it's pretty predictable, right?

Like I, as

you said,

I'm an OBGYN doctor and he is so, so very bad on reproductive health care.

And I just want to really emphasize something that you said that I think people, it doesn't make sense to people, but in states where abortion bans have been enacted, more moms die and more babies die.

And that's what Tom Tiffany supports.

Great, great.

It is dangerous.

It is dangerous.

Absolutely.

I mean, my mom, she turned 81 at the end of June.

And so she's been through it all, right?

She was pre-row and after-row.

And she keeps saying, we've already had this discussion nationally about what we need to do to make sure we can protect women's health care.

And she is just flabbergasted that we are litigating it

Again, when we know what the outcomes are.

So that is just really frustrating for her.

And by the way, my mother was a card-carrying Republican for a really, really long time.

Wow.

And still, I mean, that is how frustrated she is with the party.

She was a teaching assistant for children with special needs.

And when Scott Walker just decimated the public education system,

She says Scott Walker made her an independent, but Trump made her a Democrat.

I'm glad she's a flexible thinker because a

lot

of people are really locked into that.

You know, I see in Northeast Wisconsin, like we're a bunch of Catholics up here.

We tend to be a bunch of Republicans and we vote that way because we've always voted that way.

But once you actually start to get into the weeds and start to talk about the issues, you realize that we're so much more aligned on the things that

we care

about.

We want to be able to afford.

housing and education and have a good job and all of these things are important to every single one of us and there's one party that stands with us and there's one party that's standing in our way.

It's

so

clear but we have to be able to have these conversations and that's what makes it tricky.

And I agree, I live in Waukesha County, not exactly a bastion of liberalism, right?

But

changing, it's evolving.

It's evolving.

But I'm willing to have those types of conversations.

I'm willing to go into the reddest, smallest county across the state where people may not agree with me and have the conversations, right?

At least they're getting the message of what I stand for and what the Democratic Party is standing for.

for and that we're not going to allow the Republicans to define who we are in those spaces, that we're going to go in there and we're going to have those tough conversations and that we're going to be able to talk to people all across the state about what we want to do for the future of Wisconsin.

Sarah, how many times have you talked to people all across the state in all 72 counties?

Four times.

Every year, I have been Lieutenant Governor.

I have visited all 72 counties.

Every year, I've been Lieutenant Governor.

And it's amazing.

Our state is amazing, and I love it.

And it is so fantastic to be able to speak to people all across the state.

And so that's why I know what I hear consistently across the state is that people are doing everything right.

One job.

oftentimes two jobs and they're just struggling to make ends meet and they are so exhausted of playing by the rules and then watching billionaires and now a trillionaire

right

fleece their own pockets their taxpayer money into those folks who are already obscenely wealthy into those folks pockets that's what's frustrating to them

yeah yeah i hear that too okay one more question for you

This whole conversation has been about what sets you apart.

You are the only healthcare worker in this crowded field, the Democratic primary field for governor.

You've seen it from every angle as a nurse, as an EIS officer, as a caretaker for your dad with Alzheimer's, and as an elected official, but there's so much more to you.

Why should Wisconsin voters choose you to be our next governor?

So I have always been on the front lines.

You mentioned it.

I was also a Peace Corps volunteer doing HIV AIDS and reproductive health education.

Came back, got my nursing degree, worked ER night shifts, was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for Disease Control.

And then I stepped up again when I saw the chaos of the Trump administration during COVID and when Governor Evers needed a partner statewide.

I'm a nurse.

I'm going to do what I have always done, which is make sure that I put my head down, I look at the information in front of me and I solve problems.

That's what you can expect of me as governor and I am appreciative of having this conversation and I'm hoping that I can earn people's votes all across the state.

Thank you my friend for everything you've done for being so amazing and for taking time to join us today and have this conversation.

All right, thank

you

so

much.

I

appreciate it.

Hey, where can people find you if they want more information?

Yep, sarahforrodriguez.com, multiple policy plans on our website, and they can go there, check me out, email, ask questions, all of those things.

So yep, check it out.

Sarah for Wisconsin without an H. There's a little discrepancy there with the Sarahs right

now in

leadership.

So Sarah, no H for Wisconsin.gov.

Sarahforwisconsin.com.

It'll be .gov soon.

Oh my gosh.

All right, you guys, this is Sarah Rodriguez.

She's a nurse.

She's a public health expert.

She's our Lieutenant Governor.

And she is a Democratic candidate for Governor of Wisconsin.

I hope you found this conversation as valuable as I did.

If you did, hit that like button, leave a comment, share it.

I want to know what stood out to you, and I want to know if you're in the future.

Links to follow Sarah and learn more about our campaign are in the description.

Sarah, forward to you.

And we will see you next time.