So I'm going to let you take away.
I'll just jump right into it.
Hi again, so I'm Dale Frey, and I'm running for
Senate District 30.
Uh, first let me introduce myself.
I graduated in software engineering at George Mason University, which
is quite far from here, but it's close to Washington,
D.C.
So I was very lucky to get my first job
out of college working at the headquarters of the Department
of Education in DC.
I since I've built a career working with the government.
I'm a federal contractor.
I've worked at the GSA, the US Geological Survey, and
currently I work for ANOLA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration,
where I assist uh climate scientists reporting on the effects
of climate change on our economy.
Um while I was up there, I met a woman
from Texas.
We all know Texas girls come back home, so we
came back down here.
Uh also got excavated as her father got stage three
cancer, which is gonna segue a little bit into one
of the many reasons I'm running for office.
We live in a broken healthcare system, and this is
terrible because we all get old and we all get
sick.
I know I'm gonna get sick one day.
I took that 23andMe blood test exam on funny curiosity,
it came back and told me that I'm genetically unable
to get Alzheimer's when I get older.
I also learned this right around the same time and
I met a woman named Kenneth, a friend of mine.
She owns her own LLC.
She is a health care provider, particularly for assisted living,
so she helps people with dementia and Alzheimer's and things
like that.
And she's ranging to me saying, Dale, I'm about to
go out of business unless I drop my Medicaid recipients.
Because the Medicaid money is just not there anymore.
The Medicaid rates have not been adjusted since long before
the pandemic, and growing inflation is killing the sector.
I mean, this is terrible.
She's she's dropping people, and she knows these people, she
doesn't want to do this, but this is the system
that we live in.
And Texas, one of the few states in the country
that's not opted into the Medicaid expansion program.
I don't know how much time I have left, but
the Medicaid expansion program is something we all spend money
into.
It's a national money bucket that's paid through our federal
taxes, and that money goes to states like California and
New Jersey, but not back here.
So we Texans are paying for medical programs in California
and in Jersey, but not back here at home.
This affects people's lives.
This affects this woman named Kennetta I'm talking about.
This this affects healthcare providers.
It also makes it difficult for. for uh for uh
my father in law, example, who has said he could
have cancer in the later years of his life as
he's slowly degrading over time
God rest his soul, he was worrying about the financials.
The Medicaid money is just not there.
Also, as a retired school teacher, he didn't make Jack
Squat.
I feel that we need leadership in Austin to affect
our broken healthcare system and support our school teachers like
my father in law was.
I'm out of time, but thank you.
If you want to learn more about me, go to
fray for texas.com.
That's f R E Y for Texas.com.
Thank you for your time.