Meet the candidate: Stefan Strek for Congress

Presenter: Meet the Candidate on KEPW News welcomes Stefan Strek. Please tell us why you’re seeking the Republican nomination for the 4th Congressional District. 

Stefan Strek: There’s not enough time in the day to explain how incredibly dissatisfied I am with the health care system, both in our area and nationwide. And Eugene is supposedly the area with the most doctors who live here. So if people in Eugene can’t get to the doctor reliably, that means this is an issue across the whole 4th District.

There’s so much turnover in the doctor’s offices that, you know, often you have to re-explain yourself, your whole life story every time, completely new person who’s got to make decisions about your medication and stuff. And it’s not a working system.

But, what I do is, I was super lucky. One of my previous doctors had established a direct primary care practice. With direct primary care, it’s empowering doctors to basically return to private practice using a model that is affordable by most people.

It costs like between $80 to $120 usually depending on who’s structuring it and what age bracket they are. It usually costs a little bit more for seniors with more complicated medical issues. Usually a bit less money for children on the family plan. But honestly, without this, I don’t think I would’ve made it through COVID.

Like, there was one time where I was so sick I was completely bedridden for like nine months and lost like 40 pounds. I was pretty much only able to get treatment ’cause I was able to just reach out to my doctor directly and just get things taken care of.

It’s such an incredible time-saver. It provides a much higher quality of service. The doctors can make about twice as much money while seeing half as many patients and billing patients less for their services than what they’d normally bill insurance.

Oregon has actually been leading the country: If you’re signed up with a direct primary care provider, your monthly payments count towards your yearly deductible. So that’s really good.

But I’m thinking this system could really work on a national level if there was better, like, federal incentives put in there so far as tax forgiveness on the doctor’s income, basically saying like, ‘Hey, you know, you’re providing a absolutely needed medical service to an underserved community. We’re just not going to tax you on this.’ You know?

And it’s also a way that, like honestly, some, most of the best doctors that I’ve dealt with are doctors of like the boomer generation and these are a lot of people that are, you know, leaning towards retirement.

Direct primary care offers a work structure that would allow a lot of these providers who would normally be looking towards retirement to have an option where they can set their own work schedule.

Keep their patients who they really like, have built up relationships with over 20, 30 years of practice and keep offering the services without having to deal with their corporate overhead basically trying to, you know, jerk around both the patients and the doctors with all this red tape. 

Presenter: What is the most important issue in this election? Stefan Strek:

Stefan Strek: So far as really like what’s going to improve the lives of the people in the 4th District, health care is what I’m seeing as the No. 1 issue locally and on a national level I’m seeing health care as the No. 1 issue too.

There’s no reason that we need to be having a completely dysfunctional medical system, you know. It can make a difference. And I think this could help people all over the country and allow the doctors that would otherwise be aging out. 

You know, most of these doctors, it’s not that they don’t want to treat their patients anymore. They just don’t want to be overworked and treated poorly by corporate suits that are just crunching numbers and saying, ‘Hey, you know, I mean if you’re prescribing someone X, Y, Z, you’ve got to also give them seven other medications. Otherwise we’re just not profitable.

And especially with, the American health care scene overall. I mean, we’ve got food deserts, we’ve got health care deserts, you know, it’s just, so many veterans they have to drive like to a different state to get treatment, you know, just ’cause the VA is stretched so thin, especially as it is ratcheting up for how fast boomers are retiring,

I think it would be a great service if Congress could just not have taxes on the independent, practitioners as a way to incentivize them staying in the game and, you know, getting more people to actually provide service to communities that really need it.

You know, avoid cutting off, their patients, which are really their peers. I mean, because, you know, just you build up 20, 30 years working with the same doctor who knows how your health has progressed and why you need your various medications.

I mean, we’ve got like a whole generation of people that’s really being stacked with the system where they’re going to have to ask someone half their age for permission to keep their current health care regime, and that’s just, I’m not a boomer, but my doctor is.

And like in my experience, you know, a lot of the new trainees, so many doctors that are just getting out of medical school now, it’s the gospel all of a sudden. There’s one specific way to, you know, treat patients, and yeah, for me personally, it’s like the way they had me set up, like I couldn’t find a doctor literally for like months who could even like, touch my condition.

The option that they threw at me was, basically having to make a trip every single month down to Grants Pass just , to meet with a doctor. And it’s like, you know, it’s like seven hours of driving every month and they’re like, so, why aren’t you just totally healed yet?

And it’s like, this is a permanent condition I’ve got. I’m not sure how else to explain that doc. I’m going to need this this month and next month. it’s been working, you know, so, yeah, the way patients are treated by, the corporate health care model is just, you know, it’s, it’s gut wrenching.

Like, I was next to a couple. They must have been in their seventies in the waiting room. It was their second day waiting and they’d been there all day. They’d been there the previous day. They’d driven in into Eugene here from Oakridge two days in a row. The previous day, they’d been in the waiting room through closing.

So like it got to the end of the day, the doctors still hadn’t seen them. They were just told to be rescheduled for the next day, waited all day, got in to see this guy, really nice people like they were a chill retiree couple, and when they walked out, this woman was bent over crying because of whatever the doctor had said to her.

And that’s, you know, just too much power is, you know, just leads certain people to abuse that privilege, whether it’s the police or the health care system, you know, and you’ve got no oversight and people making really, really high- level decisions that impact people’s lives. I mean, you can’t choose which police officer gets sent to deal with things, but you should be able to choose your doctor.

But yeah, I’m just pushing the direct primary care option as an agenda that I think people can get behind.

I keep seeing more and more people on like social media. They’re asking, Hey, like I moved to Eugene. Every single doctor’s office I’ve called has said they can’t even schedule me for like nine months. 

Pretty much everyone who has experience the direct primary care system advocates for it positively. I mean, it’s the best model by like light years. Totally.

Presenter: We asked Stefan Strek, what would be different if he were to win the May Republican primary. 

Stefan Strek: It would be really cool to be able to go up against Val Hoyle in November ’cause small world One of my ex-girlfriends back in the day, she was super good friends with Val Hoyle’s daughter. So I’d actually hang out with this girl like all the time—I think we hung out on like her birthday basically.

It’d be positive to be like, especially when politics has become so toxic, on both sides, it’d be a good feeling. And you know, I think a good example to just be like, ‘Hey, you know, I disagree with a lot of your platform agendas, but I understand these are constructed by a larger political body. And I respect you as an individual and your accomplishments and understand that there’s always two sides to every story, and I’d just like to hear you out and put my different perspective in there and just see what the voters prefer. ’ 

Presenter: Is there anything else you’d like to add? Stefan Strek: 

Stefan Strek: I’ve got the website https://www.vote4strek.com, like vote, number 4, just like the 4th District. I’ve got my health care platform on there. I have the donations enabled on there, so that’s ready to go. And then so far as people who want to volunteer, that form should also be on the website.

Did you see my voter’s pamphlet statement? The Oregon Secretary of State website has the statements in their online edition. I saw mine and I took a look at my opponent’s for the primary.

I did a great job, I’ve got to say, like, I really spent a lot of time dialing this in, and I really think I hit the mark on this. I’m confident that I’ve done a really good job on that statement and that I’m presenting a platform that can actually apply to the majority of voters and actually help people.

One thing that is super frustrating just so far as why the process is broken, is, you know, it costs money to get on the ballot. So to sign up to be a candidate as U.S. representative, it only costs $100. So like a little bit of a barrier, but pretty affordable, you know, like old Farmer Johnson collecting his Social Security can afford that, you know, a hundred bucks, you know.

But to get your statement in the voter’s pamphlet? That costs $2,500 and you only get 325 words. I mean, that’s like a tweet, 325 words is like a blog post. Occupation, work history, education history, all of those words in the header count towards that 325-word limit. So like I get all that stuff in there so far as the resume is concerned, and that’s 50 words just to start that are nicked off.

Whenever I’ve opened these things I’m like: ‘Why are these people so ridiculously vague with what they’re saying? This is supposed to be a serious platform for serious issues.’  And we’ve got like 20 different people with campy catchphrases and that’s why you don’t get very many words to say specifics about what’s an incredibly complex series of issues.

You know, when you’ve got a good argument, when you’ve got good philosophy, you shouldn’t need to rig the numbers to win. You know, honestly express the issues. When the system becomes overly reliant on these kind of like, gimmicks and ‘gotcha’ games, it is setting itself up for eventual failure.

I basically just took out a credit card to make the payment. ’cause, you know, $2,500, that’s a lot of money to just pull out-of-pocket. But like, you know, over two years, that’s pretty reasonable to pay off bit by bit. So that’s definitely worth every penny in my opinion to get the message out to the people. 

Especially with so much going on in the world that like really needs fixing, I don’t like the thought of all these people just being at their home wanting a government that actually works functionally, and then you get this ballot in the mail that our whole government’s supposed to be built around— you’ve only got one option on the ballot. Like that to me is not necessarily a crime, but it’s a sign of a broken system.

Presenter: Meet the Candidate visits with Stefan Strek, who is seeking the Republican Party nomination for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District.