Wisconsin Has Zero Physicians in Its Legislature. Meet Dr. Gillian Battino — the Woman Fixing That.

You and I have seen this go down in the room.

We have seen a patient who has either died or had an increasingly dangerous morbid outcome because of health care access.

You know, and I have worked internationally quite a lot with the World Health Organization, and I was programmed to, you know, you have to be tough to get through.

You know, if you're a compassionate, empathetic, I know that's a bad word now, but I don't care.

No,

let's reclaim it.

I think it's a good word.

We're reclaiming it right here, right now.

Right now.

Empathy saves lives, right?

Empathy is why I'm in medicine.

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show.

I'm Dr. Kristen Lyrely and I'm here with Dr. Jillian Bettino.

It's Dr. to Dr. today.

Jillian is a retired radiologist who spent more than two decades serving patients in Wausau, Marshfield and Madison.

She's a mother of six.

She's got me beat by two.

She's a community builder and she's somebody who has clearly never been able to look away when things aren't working, which happens a lot these days.

And now she's running for Wisconsin's 29th State Senate District, challenging incumbent Cory Tomzik.

And here's something that I think matters enormously.

We're going to talk a lot about this.

When she wins, I'm being optimistic, she will be the only physician serving in Wisconsin's state legislature.

We have zero physicians serving in the legislature right now, so she will be the one.

We're going to talk about why that gap exists, why it matters, and it matters tremendously, and why she decided that it was her turn to step up.

So Dr. Jillian Bettino, welcome my friend.

Thank you very much.

I am so pleased to be here.

I'm so excited.

We've known each other for a little while.

When you started your Senate run back in, was that 22?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

And I was

like in the thick of things and we were doctors supporting each other and it has been such a journey.

And somehow, even though it's been four years, more than four years, we just can't stop doing this because we

understand how important it is and how necessary it is to have the voice of medicine in these leadership roles, not only so that we can vote according to the wills of our patients, but so that we can advise our colleagues and help guide policy and all of those things.

But we're going to get into that, but let's just start at the beginning because there's so much more to you than

Jill, the candidate.

You are a person who has an incredible backstory.

You grew up in Ohio.

You lost your dad when you were super young.

Eventually, you made your way to Wisconsin.

How did all of those early experiences shape who you are and what you care about?

So, yeah, I think losing my dad when I was a kid really kind of helped me.

You know, just be sensitive to people's backgrounds and how they impact their lives and their journey, who they become and how they feel about things, what they see in the world and the choices that they make.

My mom has been a really wonderful role model.

She was 25 when my dad died and it was my sister and I. So I was about, I was almost two and my sister was three, three and a half.

You know, she kind of had to start over and do all this stuff herself, you know, starting with going to college and working two jobs.

We had to move around quite a bit.

And then I think.

You know one of the biggest impacts in my life was that my mom got remarried when I was seven or eight and then a couple years later we my brother was welcomed into the world and my little brother is a magical guy.

So he was born very prematurely.

He was a two-pound baby and so he is 46 or 47 now and was

You know his life has been riddled with challenges of course, but he's also a really lovely person and I think he's the reason that I chose to go into medicine because I was

In hospitals and visiting hospitals from the age of nine, you know all the way through and and even now we continue to support him medically emotionally Community-wise all of that so I think it's he has really guided that and my mom has an enormous generous heart and and I have a very strong Quaker background and I think you know those early experiences just kind of

turned me into a person who believes in social justice, who believes that everybody has the right to health care.

I've seen the success of health care from this little, like this big baby, you know, tiny little baby.

He kind of looked like a mosquito or something.

He was so tiny and, you know, had no subcutaneous fat and was just so fragile and now he's this thriving, hilarious, loving person.

So, yeah, I think it all impacted the way I think and the way I moved through my life.

Ultimately, it all comes back to your people, doesn't it?

Whether it's your family or the people you surround yourself with, it is all about taking care of each other.

And we're all different.

We all have different needs and we all have different talents.

And so how can we live our lives in the most impactful and loving and compassionate way?

So you chose to go into radiology, which most people think about.

Well, you're just looking at pictures and doing diagnostic things.

We don't think about radiology as a bedside kind of specialty, but clearly you've been paying attention to what's going on with your patients and you're really plugged into community.

What were you seeing in your practice that started to make you feel like I have to do more than just this?

Yeah, well, so first of all, I always wanted to be what I called a Peace Corps doctor.

So I always wanted to do primary care.

I am very hearing impaired.

So I wear hearing aids in both of my ears.

I've been hearing impaired my whole life.

When I was very small, they thought that I had some kind of developmental delay, which I suppose I did because I did not have compensation for my hearing loss when I was a child.

And of course, you know, when your dad dies, when you're little, you kind of slow down and don't talk to your little older.

My options for choosing the type of practice that I would, or the type of residency that I would best fit me were, you know, down to those things where you didn't rely.

Definitely cardiology was not going to be for me.

You had to hear heart

beats for cardiology.

That's challenging.

Definitely.

Definitely.

I could tell it was beating and that was about the end of it.

And you know, for the

record though, Joe,

the gynecologist uses my

stethoscope to check people's reflexes.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I, you know, I just kind of landed in radiology and I feel like

I wanted to explain that, but I don't remember where we were going with this.

What was your initial question?

Yeah, you are a radiologist, but you really tapped into what your patients were dealing with.

You weren't just looking at pictures.

You understood their stories.

You knew that they needed more and that you had to do something different.

Yeah, so I mean radiology is a lot of pictures you're right about that for sure, but I was a breast imager so I did general radiology for the beginning of my career and then I was about 40 and Really unsatisfied with general radiology where I was in a private practice the practice was very focused on

just cranking out the numbers, you know, went in doubt, read it out, kind of a business.

And I didn't, I always went, I loved ultrasound because you could go in and talk to the patients.

And that was kind of expected, especially if anything was wrong.

But

I just didn't feel satisfied.

And I knew that I wanted to do something in global medicine because I had a strong background.

I was Spanish speaking, not very well, or not as well as my daughter anyway.

I'm always jealous about that.

But definitely had worked in Nicaragua in college and had a strong interest in...

you know working internationally and trying to marry radiology with that was just very difficult because our equipment is so large you can't strap a CT scanner or at that time an ultrasound machine onto your back right and and do the things I wanted to do

So I stopped and left the practice, which was, you know, it was not a good fit.

It was very, we didn't have any women and it was a very sexist practice and I had a lot of really negative experiences that way.

Just being expected to be a man and I, you know, it made to think that I was a nut job because I wanted maternity leave after my adoption and not my adoption, but my son's adoption.

So I went to Madison and did a fellowship in breast imaging and loved it.

I loved everything about it.

First of all, UW Madison is packed with the most experienced, educated, compassionate edge of technology kind of people and also the edge of social expectations within medicine.

And, you know, I had this experience of jumping forward like three decades from my practice here in Wausau.

where it was a bunch of men who were, you know, golfing and shooting deer, which is fine.

Shoot deer, I think, is wonderful.

But, you know, don't bring it to work at work.

You know, we need to be a collaborative community.

And in Madison, suddenly, it was just different.

It was just different.

They respect women.

They respect their practices.

And, you know, patients are treated differently.

I mean, it was really a wonderful experience that I got to do.

what I'm passionate about which is women's health and you know initially I felt kind of kind of pigeonholed into women's health because I was the only woman in the practice and they literally said to me we hired you because you're a woman and we want you to do the women's procedures but as time went on and I got older I started really respecting the fact that women want women taking care of them that that women are

wonderful communicators as physicians and as patients and that when we bring us together that medical care is improved and outcomes are improved and there's data that supports

that.

So I fell in love with breast imaging.

I did that in Madison for a little while and then the beautiful thing about breast imaging is that you talk to almost every diagnostic.

So a patient who comes in for a screening mammogram, they come in, they get their pictures, they leave, and you read those in a batch.

There's data that shows that that's how they're best interpreted in a batch when you're not interrupted, when you're just honed in on reading and focusing.

And then diagnostic patients come in with a lump where they come in because of an abnormal mammogram.

You know 99% of the time you go over their results with them and If they need a biopsy you're working with them.

So I had much more patient interaction and one-on-one patient interaction I did not have to pull out a stethoscope didn't even own one and And it was really wonderful.

I absolutely loved it women and patients are inspiring breast cancer is a

you know, a very big problem and detection is challenging and so many people benefit from early diagnosis and you get their breast cancer taken care of and then you see them 10, 15 years later thriving and doing very well or, you know, I had a patient bring her son in to meet me and he had Down syndrome and, you know, she was maybe, you know, pretty young, I would say my age now, like 50.

and her son was with her and she said, I wanted you to see why it was so important that you caught my breast cancer so early.

Wow,

and of course that really struck home with me as you know as somebody who has a special needs person in my in my family So I feel that breast imaging is primary care for the radiologist So I really really enjoyed what I did.

I am retired So and I'm I do not carry my license anymore.

So I usually don't let people call me dr. Bettino

You are a doctor you did the doctor training you did the doctor practice that you are dr. Bettino

You know, I

just want

to be firm

about it.

But there literally is law that says that you have to be very clear that you are not licensed.

So it breaks my heart a little bit because, you know, of course we invest, I think I was 31 when I got my first out of residency job.

I'm sure, you know, you understand all of those years.

It was five years of residency.

And then, you know, I think I did 10 months of my fellowship.

So.

A tremendous amount of my life invested in that, but I am retired now.

And it's like riding a bike.

You don't forget all of the things that you learned and that you practiced every day and that were your heart and soul for so much time.

Yeah and you don't forget about the reason.

You know the fact that when your patient came back and brought her son to show you the reason that your work is so important and you already know that.

You are a community person.

It is about compassion.

It is about taking care of each other.

So now you've got all of this energy and all of this training and all these smarts and you have translated that into

Oh, a desire to serve the public.

You ran for U.S.

Senate back in 22.

You ran for Treasurer.

A lot of people would have stepped back after a couple of campaigns where things didn't necessarily turn out the way you wanted them to.

What kept pulling you

back

in?

Well, so part of it is personal.

I mean, it's all personal, right?

Everything is personal.

Yeah, everything is personal.

But so...

I ran for a U.S.

Senate because I could not stand Ron Johnson.

I just, hearing him talk just, oh, it just fired me up.

And I knew that so much of what he was saying during COVID and so much of the entire COVID problem was a lack of trust in the healthcare professionals.

And

Um, that I feel like we left the door open for that a bit because there is this, especially with older physicians, there is this, I know, you know, medicine, you follow my directions, you know.

You're

authoritative, paternalistic.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly and you know if you ask questions you're considered difficult and and I think that you know that there is a lot of other there are publications by the CDC that were sort of these almost like a Same kind of air, you know, just not a lot of

Understanding by the public and I think that the door was left open and I don't want to point fingers at the CDC because I look at their website.

It seems very lay person friendly to me.

But maybe we didn't do enough education in schools.

Maybe we didn't do enough education with parents as our children were coming into the world and.

You know, I feel like everybody is, it could have done a better job or we wouldn't have had that lack of trust.

But it was clear to me that the problem needed to be solved by building trust.

And I felt like having physicians in the legislature was part of that solution.

I do understand why physicians don't run.

It is a unique situation where a physician wants to abandon, you know, I mean, what did we do, 13 years of education, 14 years of education, beyond high school.

I mean, it's an eternity.

And I think of all of the hours in the engineering library at Ohio State University where I went all the time and just sat in the corner for eight or 10 hours with a stack of books.

just filling my brain with all these, it was so much work.

So to leave that behind and come work in the legislature, you have to have financial security, you have to have, you know, your household needs to be at a certain place, you have to be at a certain place.

When I was running for treasurer, so I switched, I left the US Senate race once Mandela Barnes got in because

The oxygen went out of the room very quickly.

It was very difficult to fundraise.

And I could see the writing on the wall.

So I said, OK, where can I be useful?

And the Treasurer's Office was where I went.

I'm the kind of person who leans into whatever I'm doing and gets informed.

And, you know, again, I had wonderful, exciting plans for the Treasurer's Office to do what was needed at the time, but also to expand the office to make sure that it continued to contribute to the representation of Wisconsin families.

So I was really excited about it.

And unfortunately, while I was running, I

started feeling a little bit funny in my body, and it turns out that I had lung cancer.

So I'm a non-smoker, granola, blueberry eating, very healthy person.

I've run lots of marathons, and it was really mind-blowing.

I felt betrayed by my body in many ways, but...

I'm also a radiologist so I found it early and this is you know it's again it's it all is full circle to me this is where I need to be early diagnosis if I didn't know it before and I did know it before it was now being like nailed into my head I caught my cancer and I say I caught my cancer because I did you know I had a chest CT for an abnormal lab and then

The radiologist told me to come back in six months.

The oncologist suggested maybe a year.

I didn't like the look of it.

I thought it looked like a lung cancer, not a scar.

And I sent it to Madison.

God bless Dr. Jeff Cainey who's my favorite person in the world because he saved my life And he said let's get it out of there same with the thoracic surgeon James Mahoney is just saved my life They took out this questionable thing and it was invasive adenocarcinoma of the lung stage one so

You know, they took it out when you have invasive at that stage.

In my situation, you do not get chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

I continued my campaign.

They pulled that chest tube out and about four days later, I was walking up and down State Street in Madison getting signatures with a pneumothorax.

Wow.

Talk about

determination.

So I completed what I started, but I did not have the momentum that I had before.

I mean, my head was spinning.

You know, there's a 40% recurrence rate with that stage one, and I thought I might die.

So, you know, I did not feel like I finished what I started.

And I also didn't know what was going to happen in my life.

I literally

got my affairs in order because I if it comes back 40% that's a lot you know like sit by and look at like 10 apples and you know just grab a random one up and and I have like a little marker on the bottom of it and be like oh this is one of the four and now in those 10 and like that is what my risk is here um and um

You know I just felt really deflated and by that experience and of course I was I was super scared But at lung cancer is very aggressive.

I think almost I You know most of the time that I talked to somebody about my lung cancer They're like oh my uncle died of that well my stepdad died Yeah, my stepdad died of it just just years before my own diagnosis.

He was a smoker His cancer was smaller than mine

So it was really in my head that I was like, oh my goodness, this is going to be a big challenge.

And I hope I make it through there.

And I did.

So because it's such an aggressive cancer at three years, they were able to say, your risk is approaching zero.

And at four years, they're like, you're in good shape.

Go do your thing.

And from the very beginning, they were like, you're in better shape than 40%.

That's kind of an all-comers thing.

That, you're in great shape, just do your thing, was a, you know, like the little seed in the back of my head planted by Kelder Royce in 2022.

I love Kelder.

Kelder State

Senator, now running for governor.

Yes, yes, and she's who we have the meet-and-greet for just I was mentioning that we had a meet-and-greet before we got on here last night and we had it for Calder Roy's Yiling Zhang myself and our

local assembly candidates, Andy Weitrick, who's awesome, and John Crowell, were all there.

So it was like this big party, all of these wonderful people, and Kelda was there, and she is the one who said, you know, you should run against Corey Tomcheck, and had planted it years ago.

And so when I got that little angel dust that I was good to go and that I didn't need to think about the lung cancer, I immediately started asking questions, and I called Kelda, and here I am.

Life takes you on a journey.

Doesn't it?

I'm finishing what I started.

But you know, from your brother's experience, which has been a lifelong experience for you, your experience with your patients, the story you mentioned earlier about your patient bringing her son back, your own personal health care journey.

And I remember the early stages when you were going through that and just how, even though you were in the middle of this campaign that you were not going to let go because you are so determined and so resilient.

you had to deal with this much bigger, literally existential situation and

yet

you rebounded and here you are.

So that all begs the question, why is it so important for someone like you with your experiences to be at the table?

Representation matters.

You know it as a person, as a human in the world, but also you know it as a physician.

So it matters because

You and I have seen this go down in the room.

We have seen a patient who has either died or had an increasingly dangerous morbid outcome.

because of healthcare access.

And I have worked internationally quite a lot with the World Health Organization and I was programmed to, you have to be tough to get through.

If you're a compassionate, empathetic, I know that's a bad word now, but I don't care.

No,

let's reclaim it.

I think it's a good word.

We're reclaiming it right here, right now.

Right now.

Empathy saves lives, right?

Empathy is why I'm in medicine.

Empathy puts you in the room, helps you listen.

It's what makes women better physicians, right?

Sorry guys, but it is as we are mothers, we are daughters, we take care of our, our husband's dying mother.

I mean, I did that, right?

Empathy saves lives.

And I was programmed when I was working in Guyana and Nicaragua to

expect and tolerate suffering that you just did not expect to see in the United States because we have the best healthcare in the world.

And I saw those things and I was like, okay, well, this is understandable.

Why would somebody have...

bilateral congenital hip dysplasia with their femoral heads dislocated under their gluteus like literally in their butt, right?

Like their muscles are not

connected.

They are literally dislocated that the balls of the femoral heads are back under their butt muscles and they are walking because they have not and they're 14 years old and you know a lot shorter than they would be and in chronic pain

Um, you, you know, you would see advanced breast cancer is like you walk in the room and you're like, like you can, I don't mean to be, you can smell it.

You can smell it.

Yeah.

So I started seeing those things in Wisconsin, in central Wisconsin.

And it would be somebody with a horrible breast infection who was maybe a farmer and had a staff infection and just didn't have time.

They didn't have time because they just had so much to do.

And also were extremely concerned about the cost of their bill.

And so their deductible is high or they don't have, I mean, I've seen it all.

They don't have health insurance at all.

because their spouse is the typical, you know, out of house or off-farm worker and they've gotten, they've lost their job.

I've seen a patient come in with a cancer coming through the breast, taking up most of the breast.

I could not see normal tissue ulcerated.

Again, you walk in the room and you can smell it.

The

patient was younger than I was.

You know, typically if you see something like that, it's in a

you know, in a developing country where the patient, you know, lives in the hinterlands and can't access health care, or it's somebody who's extremely elderly or incapacitated in other ways and is just not detected clinically, you know, because they're not being seen regularly or they have limitations otherwise.

This was a patient who was walkie-talkie working.

You know, a young woman and she explained that she knew it was there.

It had been there for years and it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and she knew it was very likely a breast cancer.

But she was waiting for her life insurance policy to mature because she didn't have anything to leave her family.

Those types of things, I mean, those are the types of things where you put on that hard hat, you take care of your patient, you are kind and you listen and you support them and you make all the phone calls and you get the ball rolling to get them into the oncologist, to get them into the surgeon, to get them the most optimistic outcome that you possibly can.

and then you walk to your car and you cry and you cry and cry and cry and you just let it all out and you say, this is not okay.

This is not okay.

Everyone deserves a chance to have a stage one diagnosis.

You know, that's what I love about being or loved, retired, loved about being a breast radiologist is that

I would see some scary things and then people come back years later and their kid that was three is now in high school and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so wonderful.

You know, look what we can do together.

Look what we can do when we deliver healthcare to everyone.

You know, when somebody is not afraid to come to the doctor, it's just, it's...

It is so compelling.

It is such an important story.

And I look at my brother too.

I don't remember my parents ever talking about his bills other than that it was enormous.

You know, it wasn't like, we're going to have to sell our house, you know?

And my parents were, you know, small college professors and they didn't...

break in big bucks to pay off all of this money.

It's not like we were rolling in it.

We were not, you know, but we knew that his health care was that he, we could afford it.

And he was, you know, he was in the hospital all the time.

I mean, until he was about probably 12, he was in the hospital a lot.

But we knew it's okay.

It's okay.

They can do something for him.

And it's just, it's not okay anymore.

It is not okay.

I'm not going to sit down and, and, you know, not do something right now.

It's just so important to have somebody in at the table develop developing policy with with.

those stories and those experiences, not only that, but somebody who's been on the phone with an insurance company explaining why somebody needs a procedure.

Somebody who has had those conversations about how Medicare defunding and Medicaid defunding affects rural hospitals.

How uncompensated care in SD 29 is very high.

It's over $79 billion a year.

I mean, it's so high.

Is that the right number?

I'm going to have to check that number.

It might not.

I'm going to check that number.

It's high, regardless of the specific number.

It's really high.

It's not billion.

It's million.

But it's really high.

It's really high.

And what that does is it interrupts a cycle of terrible, vicious, messy cycle.

of payment that ends up transferring costs to hospitals and then to private pay people and out-of-pocket pay people and nobody wins, right?

I mean people think that they don't need to worry about it because they have great insurance.

Your premiums are going up because of uncompensated care.

So when you know when administrations decrease compensation for

the patients who are most vulnerable, so those like my brother who are on Medicare and Medicaid, those like veterans who might have to go to private hospitals because of access to care in their rural area, elderly people, special needs people, regular working families who require badger care, all of those people, when that care is not appropriately compensated, then yes,

people who are worried about paying taxes and are super wealthy, they're going to pay more.

And we all need to see that cycle.

And having stood there in the room with a patient and said, you need a breast ultrasound.

But before I can do, this is, I'm so embarrassed and disgusted to say this, but before I can do your breast ultrasound, I am required to send you to financial services.

So you can figure out

a payment plan.

So I have a patient in my room who looks like she has breast cancer, and I'm almost certain of it based on the mammographic appearance, almost certain.

And I have to worry her and her family with a discussion about how she's going to pay.

I mean, what are the chances that she's going to walk out of the room and not come back?

They're good.

It's happened many times.

So that is why that's why I'm here.

Yes and as a physician you know how to take care of your patient but all of the barriers that stand between you delivering that care and your patient receiving the care and I just want to really emphasize something that you said that I think is incredibly important especially for the people in central Wisconsin but for people all over the state when somebody doesn't have health insurance when they can't afford to pay.

These are children.

These are new moms.

These are elderly folks.

So many people who live in nursing homes, veterans, vulnerable people.

They still get health care.

They go to the emergency department and usually they wait a long time before they go because they don't want to have to go but they show up there and they get that care and they can't afford it.

So then that is a financial burden for them and it is a financial burden for the hospital that then has to pass the cost on to

all of the rest of us.

And that's when our premiums go up and the cost for our care goes up.

So when our system is so fundamentally broken and it's going to get more broken because of HR1, because of Trump's big, beautiful bill that kicks people off of the ACA and kicks people off of Medicaid, everything is about to get much more expensive for all of us.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And that's why we need more physicians at the table.

But here's the million dollar question.

Why aren't there more physicians at the table?

I've talked with docs all over the country running for different positions in Congress, in the U.S.

Senate, in state Senate seats, in state assembly seats.

Why are more doctors not stepping up to use their personal voices, the voices of their patients to help fix this broken system?

Well, I think part of it is a number of doctors

Run I mean some I've met lots of doctors.

I know Annie Andrews is running.

Yeah, yeah, she's super cool Lindsey Graham and she was running four years ago, right?

She was running four years ago and she lost her primary to Nancy Macy mace.

Oh, yeah, the famous

Nancy

Mace.

Yes.

Yeah So I think there are a couple things at play so first of all When we graduate from medical school we have so much debt

that it is scary.

It is unacceptably limiting.

And I think it contributes to a huge number of problems.

First of all, who chooses to go to medical school?

I think that there are a lot of privileged people in medical school.

For sure.

And I was one of them.

I mean, I'm a white person.

I'm a woman who comes from an educated family.

I mean, those things right there are privileged things.

The fact that I had a rough start in life, you know, that's kind of old news water under the bridge.

I mean, at this point in my life, and when I graduated from college, I had no debts because my stepdad was a teacher at my university, so I could, you know, get that faculty brat kind of thing, so I have lots of privilege in my life.

When I walked out of medical school, I had an enormous debt.

We know all about that debt.

I think my husband and I finished paying off our debt.

My husband's also a physician.

We met in gross anatomy.

Aww.

So cute.

He was dissecting the body next to the one I was dissecting.

Cadaver neighbors.

Gross.

We laugh.

We laugh.

I remember those days.

So, you know, part of it is that we, you know, we finished paying off our debt when we were in our 40s, when our first kid was going to college, right?

So debt is part of it.

And then you start when you're so old, right?

You start your first job when you're so old, you're trying to build a retirement pad, you're trying to pay off your debt, and you're also trying to prepare your family if you have children.

trying to prepare your family for you know hopefully putting something away so that they can go to college without creating huge debt and you know and you're trying to live your life.

So I think that part of it is just that whole circle of debt and I have solutions for that.

I like the train and retain programs.

I think that we can do more in Wisconsin too.

Make medical school affordable for everyone who wants to go to medical school.

So that's that I think we can take care of that with sort of a state Health Corps program my daughter did the National Health Corps program and she's doing her payback now, so she's serving under under Served communities right now as part of her payback and I think we can do things like that on the state level, but we have to break this cycle of

burning out physicians.

So when you finally get your bills paid off and you finally get to a financial place where you feel secure enough to actually perform public service.

You're old you know and I'm not old old, but I am 56 You know my kids are my youngest child is 20.

He's in college now And so I think that's one thing that can get in the way it there's not enough time We don't have control of our own lives what we generally work for hospital systems now my husband

I'll give you an example.

My husband was on call last night.

He worked a whole day yesterday.

He was on call last night and he's working right now and he's on call tonight.

So could he run for office?

No way.

No

way.

So I think that that is one of the problems is that you know, maybe we need SEIU to step into to physicians Practices and we're seeing more and more unionized physicians across the country.

So that's that's one problem.

It's not the only problem, but it's one problem also when I was running for a US Senate, I found that the mistrust

of physicians is so strong that it's hard to get elected.

So one of the reasons that I'm really, you know, it's good to be a retired physician is that people don't focus on that so much.

I don't feel compelled to focus on that so much.

And I am more of an everyday person.

So I have this wonderful experience and this knowledge that helps me listen, helps me understand.

but doesn't create that barrier.

So I don't say, you know, I'm Dr. Patino, I say I'm Jillian.

Because when you go to a farmer's door, and you know, they immediately, they're like, you're rich.

I don't, you don't know.

Yeah,

there is

definitely this misconception out there that like every doctor is rich and has no problems and you know that I think used to happen it the gulf trips and all of that stuff that was

the 80s.

It is not like that anymore.

I just not like that anymore.

And also, there's history.

You know, there's history.

Like I, when I was seven, my mom had finished her.

So after my dad died, my mom went back to college, worked all these jobs and then got her degree in accounting and then got her CPA.

And those were crazy times.

It was crazy.

I don't even remember seeing my mom.

She was always working.

We were always staying with a neighbor or babysitter or whatever.

She took great care of us, but

She couldn't do it personally because she was trying to get her feet under her.

We moved to West Virginia for my mom to get her first big girl job as a teacher at a small college in Shepherd's Town, West Virginia, Shepherd College.

And we lived in this old house and my mom made, I think it was like 20 something thousand dollars a year.

And this was in 1978.

Um, um, we could only heat one, one bedroom and the living room.

So we like literally covered all the vents.

Do you remember those days?

You taped up all the windows with

the plastic and the hair dryer.

Exactly.

And we shared a bedroom.

Me and my mom and my sister shared a bedroom and, um, you know, times were tough.

It was tough.

I didn't have.

You know clothing growing up like like my friends and whatever.

I mean it was fine.

We were happy We had lots of love and we had you know You know we went hiking and we you know we played on the neighbor's piano We climbed trees climbed lots of trees and life was good, but it wasn't a a rich kid

thing.

I mean, I, you know, I had the privileges, lots of privileges in my life, but I still had to work hard by myself.

And I, I still, we had food insecurity when I was a kid.

And I definitely remember some scary, you know, some scary kind of stressful moments that stick in your head.

Because when you're a kid, and you experience those kind of things, you, it doesn't leave you, right?

So I think now, as a person who's a retired physician, that it's hopefully

an opportunity to connect with voters and meet them where they are a little bit more with a little bit more trust and a little bit more common ground and language because I do think that that gets in the way and I don't think that I think a lot of doctors don't understand that and and work on that part of it so you have to work on that part of it you have to you know

Understand what they're seeing and like the politics of resentment that that wonderful book by Michelle

Kathleen Kathleen,

thank you Yeah,

you keep talking

Kathleen yeah, there we go Kathleen Kramer chef

Michelle Kraken

released the Kraken.

This is a great book.

It is about, it's a woman who travels all over the state and talks with regular people about what they care about, trying to understand why they vote the way that they do and what the issues are that really matter to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that, that resentment is a rural resentment.

Um, and that, I saw that in my practice and I think that if there's one thing,

outside of medical knowledge and medical experience that that being a physician has brought to me and my personality and my lived experience that I find incredibly valuable.

It is that when you have a short interface with a patient and you're talking breast cancer, you have to be very focused on trust building.

And that doesn't come from pretend.

That doesn't come from a nice smile or a warm gesture.

Of course, that has to be present.

That comes from giving people a reason to trust you.

And that is listening, that is responding to their concerns, that is giving them time.

And then that is walking out of the room to advocate for your patient and get it done so that when you come back in the room, you can say, okay,

you're going to go from here over to the clinic and you're going to see this person and this person and this person.

I, you know, I dialed it up and I told them that you need to be seen today.

And sometimes that's because they have an aggressive breast cancer and they need urgent care.

And sometimes that's because they are worried or because they're traveling or because so you listen to their needs and meet them where they are.

And, you know, don't judge, don't

Do any of the stuff that is destructive, and I think that we see every day on television and on social media is this judgmental, divisive stuff that has to stop if we are going to rebuild trust of the Democratic Party, trust of politics.

Politics isn't the right word.

Trust of doers, legislators, the fixers, the people who are actually representing.

and getting the job done.

And then we have to do it.

Then we have to step out there and we have to do it.

So that is the job, is taking that experience as a physician and is relocating it to the legislature.

That's such a great way to distill everything that you've just said, taking all your doctor skills and using it to take care of your constituents as a leader.

So let's talk specifically about your district.

The 29th covers central Wisconsin, so it's Wausau and Marathon County, rural communities who are dealing with a lot of the economic pressures that we've talked about already in this conversation.

You have written extensively about housing costs, childcare, medical debt, crumbling roads,

What are you hearing from people who live in this region?

Is it affordability?

What are the issues and how can you address them?

It's affordability.

Yeah.

It's every time.

It's affordability.

And that is how I am getting Trump voting.

previous Trump voters who are independence.

And I would say that our independence number is huge here.

So about 30%.

And I'm knocking a lot of independent and Republican doors.

I almost, you know, I would say 85% are people who are persuadable and are often fed up and frustrated buyers or more is kind of situation.

So I think that

The most common thing that happens is, you know, at a door, I introduce myself.

I don't say I'm a Democrat because honestly, I've got a lot of.

I have a lot of suggestions for the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to another

episode.

It's another episode.

Yeah.

I mean, at the end of the day.

the things that have happened, it's like any bad relationship, right?

We have to take responsibility for what has gone wrong, and we have to fix it if we want things to go right.

If we want to build trust, we have to understand why we are not trusted.

And honestly, in rural Wisconsin, it is the things that I'm hearing at the doors.

So they will say, roads, roads, roads, roads, roads.

That is so huge around here.

And now that

we're seeing a little bit more construction, at least on the main roadways.

It's just transportation.

It's getting to where you want to go is very challenging.

And then the roads that are being fixed are not the roads you live on, but the roads that the public travels on, like major roads.

So the frustration there is that the more gravel roads and rural roads for

agricultural purposes, or delivering kids to school, or the family that works in Marshfield but lives in, you know, Dewey or, you know, a union or some smaller community has to travel on these smaller roads to get to a larger road.

And those are

Dangerous, uncamped, you know, have frost restrictions for agricultural deliveries and increased costs that way.

When there is a problem, the farmers have to circumvent and increase their cost.

you know, so rose, rose, rose is a cost issue, right?

Because we spend about in Wisconsin, we spend billions of dollars, I think the number was $2 or $3 billion a year fixing our cars because because of damage to our cars.

So I personally have not spent billions, but it sure feels like it gotten phone calls from a kid in the middle of the night who should be at home and has a flat tire because they're, you know, hit a pothole.

So

Yeah, I think roads are a really big thing that, you know, we have an address and we have chronically not addressed for over 15 years and it's become this enormous and growing insurmountable problem, right?

Because if you don't, if you don't do maintenance, then you got to fix the whole road.

You can't just, you know, fix a crack.

You've got a crumbling road with like no base under it and it's just destroyed.

So roads are a big one.

Property taxes are huge and water costs.

So in our area and across the state.

because housing has gone up and up and up, then property taxes are adjusted accordingly.

So we need to intervene there.

We need to educate people about homestead tax credits.

Only about, I think it's 40% of people who are eligible for the homestead tax credit, which can be up to $1,200 a year, are utilizing it.

We need to deal with public school funding.

Which is a huge problem in and of itself, but we have to get rid of the voucher system.

It needs to be phased out It makes no sense to be taking money from the public schools and And then we have these referenda that are increasing cost for families So it is you know from every single direction at the gas pump.

Okay, that's out of our hands It's a federal issue.

It's an illegal war issue, but it is

an issue that is you know again another stretching of this impossible how do we you know and also our salaries are not keeping up with all of this so yeah and on top of it so it's just this impossible issue from every point you know we have automation in mozini that replaced 200 workers gone in a day there have been i don't know i think last time i looked it was about about 1700 and this was months ago that i looked

warnings of job loss across the state because there's a requirement that you have to give a warning.

And a lot of those are from closures.

It's not from layoffs and repositioning.

So people are literally out of a job.

So we have automation replacing jobs.

We have, you know, poor salary to begin with and the inability of salaries to keep up with our costs.

And it is people are stressed.

So much so that yesterday I was talking with the local Marathon County CEO of United Way.

And of course, I'm always asking about healthcare.

And I said, you know, what are people telling you about healthcare access?

He's like, they are so desperate that healthcare is not on their radar.

What they're worried about is the next thing for their kids, like for example,

buying school supplies is a huge deal around here.

I don't know if other communities have to do that, but I remember with my kids spending $600 in school supplies for four kids.

So notebooks and crayons and all of those things and then right after that winter.

And these kids man one year you got in that coat.

the boots, the mittens, the hats that never come home.

Yeah,

it's relentless.

And the more kids you

have, the more expensive it is.

The cost of having a family in this environment where the federal government is saying, have more babies.

We need more babies.

Like, sure.

But make it reasonable for us to grow our families.

Make it safe.

Give us the health care.

Help us out with childcare.

Help us out with the affordability piece that makes it possible for us to live our lives and raise our families.

Right.

Yeah, it's just such basic things knocking the doors I I talked to this young woman who told me that she lives with her sister or she was visiting her sister her sister was at risk of losing her home because she couldn't afford to paint it and So she was going to be fine, but she couldn't afford the fine.

So I mean these things are Just I mean just from every direction from every direction people are strapped

Strapped, I mean the kids aren't aren't able to join their their sporting club, you know to play hockey or soccer Or football because parents are having to you know, there's there's costs associated with that even even at the school you have to pay for athletic fee to have your kid participate so Yeah, I think that we you know, we need to do something about cost and they're certainly

a lot of ways that we can address that.

And we go for those big-ticket items like health care and property taxes and utility bills.

And also, we had a major PFAS contamination.

We still have a major, because those don't go away, right?

I hope everybody understands that.

That's a forever chemical, and it's a very dangerous one.

For my own cancer, my exposure is PFAS in my well and other water.

and nitrates.

So those are, that's what I know of.

I don't have any radon or any of that.

So these are dangerous things.

And for our PFAS solutions here for city water, we had major cost increases.

So I talked to a guy who was a Republican and he

Said I said, you know, what's what's waking you up in the middle of the night was worrying you and he said nothing Everything's great.

I was like, oh how wonderful really?

Yeah And then we continued What a surprise we started chatting and I said, you know, one of the things I'm really concerned about is our property taxes And water and he perked right up and he's like yeah, I moved out to wringle

From wassa and I have 40 acres and a larger home and my property taxes are I think he said less but at least equal And my water bill up here in the home that he rents now has gone up from 80 to almost 300 dollars

Wow

So and that is you know for all of that work we had to do here locally so and meanwhile

You know, one of the contributors to PFAS is 3M.

And meanwhile, my opponent is accepting money from 3M.

So you can, you know, you can see how there's like a disconnect here.

I don't know if that's just not paying attention and just accepting what money comes or, you know, maybe we need to wonder who he's worth.

I think that's generous of you.

Hey listen, we could sit and talk for a long time and we have but we probably should start to bring this to a close so I have one more really important question for you.

There is a lot of concern right now amongst the general public about our voting system.

Whether it's safe, whether it's secure, whether my vote matters.

So what would you say to somebody in your district who has maybe never voted or who gave up on politics and doesn't think it matters

What do you want them to know about why their voice and their vote actually matters in your race?

So we have worked so hard, and I know you have been part of this, for a huge part of this, for redistricting, to make our districts less gerrymandered.

That's one reason that both seem to not matter.

If they're so gerrymandered that there's no hope.

I think that we need to take every single opportunity to show that we're paying attention and watching.

So one of them is voting, showing up to vote and experiencing that for yourself, whether that means an absentee ballot, which is protected, we all know that, or going to your local voting poll, your polling area, and doing it there.

We must show up if you're not experiencing voting on a personal level Then I think you're also giving up your opportunity to witness how it goes and and what happens while you're there So the actual experience of handing someone your ID having them look it up in the book having it double checked receiving your your ballot from someone else filling it out in a private space and then

entering it into the receptacle.

I think that that is an important experience for every eligible voter to have.

That in of itself is something that we really need to elevate.

So get out there and vote is my first message.

It's a personal, proud, American responsibility and privilege.

Secondly, I would say that

I have talked to so many young people and I feel like between the ages of 18 and almost 40, there's a complete disconnect between their struggling lives and I feel that's intentional.

So again, just trying to get those ends to me and the time and attention.

to the voting opportunity.

So we as a society need to connect more with young people and as representatives and leaders in the area we need to connect more with young people and say to get out there and vote.

And then we have to pay attention to what is happening in terms of lawsuits, in terms of legislation, whether we're talking at the federal level, which is a very active place right now, or what's happening right here.

and understand what is propaganda and what is real.

So our mayor in Wausau moved our voting boxes, you know, that is propaganda.

That is a little gimmick for his display and for his peacocking exercise of the day, right?

Voting is very strong and we absolutely need to do the work ourselves and then advocate to those who

our connections and maybe are not willing to do the work and have the reasons why.

We know it's strong because we know that the polling is strong because I've been there many many many times over the years and I've seen the same ladies and by the way they don't likely vote the way I do because I'm in a rural area and they are not

Partisan when they are in there they are working for their country And I think that that is what we you know that is the voice what we need to have we need to continue to support

movement to make sure that vulnerable people have access to absentee ballots and that make sure that we have time to get those ballots in as we've seen you know Trump's movement to stop the reception of absentee ballots on election day.

You know all of those things we need to pay attention and we need to keep fighting and if you don't show up then you know politics is going to happen anyway legislation is going to happen anyway and you're going to

you know, bear the consequences.

You're going to experience that in your life.

So to the 20 year olds who are out there, you know, I mean, it's like a show up or

Shut up, you know

We have to emphasize how safe and secure elections are in Wisconsin We've got one of the most decentralized election system.

It is run by our neighbors.

There are nearly 1500 polling places across the state There's no like big central place where somebody can come in and contaminate everything so Wisconsin is a safe place to vote you can find out about your entire ballot at my vote at wii.gov

of Dr. Jill Bettino.

Where can people find you on the

interwebs?

I ever hoped for and lots of momentum and I think we can really work hard for Wisconsin families to make a difference.

So thank you so much for having me today.

I

am thrilled to have had this time together and to be back in this fight with you, my friend.

Retired Dr. Jillian Bettino.

Thank

you so much

for your commitment to the people of Wisconsin and for doing it from the heart.

If you all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, please do share it, like, subscribe, help us get the word out.

That is how we inform the electorate and make sure that people are making good informed choices about the future of our state and our own futures.

Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.