Slotkin came to Iowa with a warning: the healthcare crisis hitting rural communities isn’t coming—it’s already here.
US Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan made a stop in Iowa on Tuesday to campaign alongside Democratic congressional candidate Sarah Trone Garriott. The pair held a town hall in Des Moines focused on the crisis emerging around health care following significant cuts in federal funding to Medicaid and the loss of COVID-era subsidies that once made Affordable Care Act insurance more affordable for more than 117,000 Iowans.
At the town hall, attendees raised repeated concerns about Medicaid cuts and rural clinic closures. Trone Garriott argued that Iowa is already absorbing the damage from federal health care cuts in ways that other states are only beginning to anticipate.
“There’s a lot of concern about health care access, about these Medicaid cuts and how it’s closing clinics in rural communities already,” Trone Garriott said, pointing to the MercyOne Clinic in Ottumwa that closed in response to these cuts.
“Every single person who raised their hand seemed to have a personal story,” Slotkin said, noting she found the immediacy of Iowa’s health care crisis striking compared to what she’s hearing in Michigan.
Trone Garriott is among a growing faction in the country supporting a public option for health insurance. A public option is a government-run health insurance plan that competes alongside private insurance. Instead of a single-payer system where the government replaces private insurance entirely, a public option gives Iowans another choice—you could pick it the same way you’d pick a plan from a private insurer, but without the profit motive driving up costs.
The idea is that competition from a government plan would pressure private insurers to lower their prices and improve coverage, while also catching people who fall through the cracks of the current system.
“People need something. And that’s the opportunity that government has. To step in and … provide an option for folks so they have coverage,” Trone Garriott said.
Slotkin said she has been traveling across the Midwest to support Democrats running in competitive districts—a circuit that has also taken her to Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pa. She cast the trip as part of a broader argument that the national Democratic Party too often ignores Democratic candidates like Trone Garriott in the middle of the country between presidential cycles.
“Sometimes the national party forgets about the middle of the country,” Slotkin said. “What works in the middle of the country can work on the coast, but not the other way around.”
In a press availability afterwards, Slotkin was asked about President Donald Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran. The question was asked prior to Trump backing down and agreeing to a ceasefire Tuesday.
“Right now my Republican colleagues, they have the House and the Senate. If they want to actually show some backbone for the first time in a year, I think there’s a lot we can do,” Slotkin said, stopping short of calling for impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment.
Trone Garriott also spoke about the loss of Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Waukee and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines. Both were killed in the war’s first week. She also highlighted the economic pressure the conflict is putting on Iowa farmers, with diesel and fertilizer costs spiking just before spring planting season, and made the case that if there’s money to fund the war, there’s money for health care.
“If we can spend a billion dollars a day on a war in Iran, we can keep the clinic in Ottumwa open,” Trone Garriott said. “We can provide health care for our neighbors. We should be spending the money at home to make the biggest difference.”
Slotkin did not rule out a future national campaign when asked, though she declined to make an announcement. She instead said she wants to be part of the conversation and asserted that the future of Democratic leadership needs to be rooted in Midwestern politics.
Trone Garriott is running in Iowa’s 3rd congressional district against Republican incumbent US Rep. Zach Nunn.
