Presidential hopeful Rep. Tim Ryan discussed health care and education heavily during his speech on Tuesday during a Politics & Eggs event in New Hampshire.
One of the hot topics Ryan tackled early in his speech was the country's health care system.
"The next step has got to be a public option for people to buy affordable, accessible health care in the United States of America," he said. "That shouldn’t be too much to ask."
Ryan shared intimate details on how his mother recently revealed to him on Mother's Day that she is paying $1,000 a month for pharmaceuticals. He said she receives just more than $3,000 monthly from her pension and said the situation is unacceptable. Ryan also said many American households are dealing with that same issue.
"We also need to have another conversation around health care that recognizes that 75% of the health care costs in the United States are from chronic diseases that are largely preventable," he said.
Ryan suggests the U.S. "flips the system" and rewards doctors for helping others to stay healthy and to offer refunds and rebates to patients who remain healthy.
Ryan announced in early April that he is running for office and said on Tuesday he will focus heavily on a "robust education reform" as president.
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"I will be the education president," Ryan declared.
The Democrat said he will push for social and emotional learning programs as well as implement a mental health counselor in every public school.
"When you look at a robust social and emotional learning program, a study of about 300,000 kids has shown an 11 percentile increase in test scores," he said. "It literally closes the achievement gap."
Ryan said he believes such programs haven't been introduced to many U.S. classrooms because "the federal government's broke, the current president ahs no clue about these things and no one's talking about it."
"I'm telling you, if you're looking for something different...I'm your guy. We're going to do this."
“That’s what I’m offering in this campaign. Real solutions that get to the heart of the matter," Ryan said." I think that’s what the American people want. They want real solutions, they want us to come together and start solving these problems. That’s what I want to do."
