Episode 330- When A Heart Attack Hits Nobody Asks Party. with Sarah Anthony

A state budget can feel like spreadsheets and deadlines until you connect it to the moment someone needs insulin, prenatal care, or an ER visit they never planned for. From the 2026 Mackinac Policy Conference, we sit down with Michigan State Senator Sarah Anthony, chair of appropriations, to talk through what happens when federal decisions hit a state balance sheet and the bill comes due at home.

We get specific about the pressure points: a projected $1.2 billion gap tied largely to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance, the real-world tradeoffs lawmakers face before they can fund anything new, and why Medicaid eligibility and preventive care matter for costs and outcomes. Senator Anthony makes the case that when people lose regular checkups and primary care, they don’t disappear from the system, they show up later in crisis mode at local hospitals and emergency rooms.

We also pull on a thread that too often gets treated as separate: food insecurity as health policy. From food deserts to supporting access to fresh options, she explains how nutrition shapes disease and why universal school meals became such a consequential fight. Then we dig into medical debt, including a bipartisan effort with hospitals to increase awareness of charity care and financial assistance and to keep medical debt off credit reports so a health emergency doesn’t spiral into long-term financial damage.

If you care about Michigan health care, Medicaid, hospital sustainability, and practical policy that works across party lines, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the biggest health care problem you want solved next.

Transcript

Announcer
This episode of the Common Bridge is part of a special 21-part series of interviews recorded with healthcare leaders from across Michigan during the 2026 Mackinac Policy Conference, in partnership with the Michigan Health and Hospital Association. In these short conversations with his guests, Rich explores regulation, cost pressures, workforce challenges, and the future of healthcare in Michigan and around the country.

Richard Helppie
Back at the Mackinac Policy Conference today, on behalf of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, I'm Rich Helppie, the host of the Common Bridge Podcast and Substack, and with us now is State Senator Sarah Anthony of the Michigan Senate. We're going to talk about healthcare and whatever else comes up during the next eight to ten minutes. Senator, thank you so much for joining us.

Sarah Anthony
Thank you for having me.

Richard Helppie
How's the conference been so far?

Sarah Anthony
The weather is gorgeous — this is what people pay the big bucks for to come to our state. It's beautiful. There's a lot of energy; you can tell this is a big political year for folks, so people are excited to be here. Lots of side conversations, lots of speculation. It's a good year to be here.

Richard Helppie
Good for electoral politics — and how about for legislative politics? Anything exciting moving through the House or the Senate in Lansing?

Sarah Anthony
What I hope will be moving soon is our state's budget. As you know, I'm not just a senator — I'm also chair of the Appropriations Committee, and we have a statutory deadline to get our state's budget onto the governor's desk by June 30th. So my hope is that...

Richard Helppie
We might want to cut this interview short so you can go work on that.

Sarah Anthony
We've got lots of staff, lots of moving pieces happening even right now. But I'll tell you, a lot of the conversations we're having are around the state's budget and making sure we get that done on time for the people of Michigan.

Richard Helppie
Indeed. And how's healthcare playing into that? Medicaid discussions? Any other discussions going on?

Sarah Anthony
It's the biggest conversation happening right now. As you know, H.R. 1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill — did a number on our state's balance sheet. We're looking at a 1.2-billion-dollar deficit, and much of that is tied to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, or food assistance, for individuals. So before we can start thinking about any new investments, we have to figure out how we're going to fill that gap and make sure people still have healthcare across the state of Michigan. It's not an easy feat, but we're up to the challenge.

Richard Helppie
Medicaid expansion and Medicaid eligibility are topics across all 50 states. How has Michigan been affected lately?

Sarah Anthony
Significantly. We have so many men, women, and children who rely on Medicaid for the basics. And as many of the folks listening to this know, if you don't get preventative care, if you don't have a primary care physician, or you're not getting those regular checkups, where do you end up? At your local hospital, at the ER, in fact. And sometimes that's triage — it's crisis mode. So with Medicaid, we try to make sure we're covering people so they're consistently taking care of themselves and preventing that next crisis from a healthcare perspective. But when the federal government does a number on our balance sheet the way it did, we're going to have to make some pretty difficult decisions this year.

Richard Helppie
If you could have a conversation with the president or the secretary of health and human services, what would your ask be on behalf of the state of Michigan?

Sarah Anthony
That's a profound question, because I've never thought of it that way. What I'd say — what I tell anyone in my role as senator — is to lift up the voices of our people. People are looking at everything being too expensive, and healthcare is one of those things where, for some things, you can't get back what's lost. So prioritizing our healthcare, alongside the reductions and efficiencies we can all figure out in state government — healthcare has to be a top priority for our country. It's so important, and it's so personal, whether it's dealing with a health emergency, the birth of a child, or all sorts of other medical issues that arise for people. It doesn't matter your political persuasion — health is health, and that's something we take really seriously.

Richard Helppie
Some people may never have walked in the shoes of someone who's experienced food insecurity or gone without health coverage. You mentioned both SNAP benefits and health benefits as important parts of this — has there been any discussion about linking them? Because we know so much of disease comes from bad food.

Sarah Anthony
That's right, that's right. There are so many conversations happening — whether it's addressing food deserts in some of our communities so people actually have fresh options, or making sure our family farmers get the resources they need to put fresh food on the table. We led the charge on making sure kids eat breakfast and lunch every day; it was a big fight last year to get universal school meals so kids weren't hungry. So these are some of the investments and ideas floating around the table. I think, at the end of the day, none of these issues are partisan. You haven't asked me yet whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat, and I hope folks realize these are just issues that matter to Michiganders and people across the country. So I'm excited to get creative about how we address them.

Richard Helppie
Well, I wish more people didn't care about party affiliation and cared more about policy, because we all have problems to solve, right? We all need medical care, whether we're of one political persuasion or the other. We all need to eat every day. There was a day when those kinds of things transcended the political system, when people like yourself who were elected to serve went there to fulfill those needs. Hopefully we can get back there.

Sarah Anthony
I think we can. And I'll tell you this — my district, the 21st District, which covers Ingham and Eaton County, is kind of a microcosm of the entire state. I've got an urban population, suburban areas, and very rural areas as well. So when I talk about healthcare, it can be right on the south side of Lansing or on a very remote farm in Charlotte, but everyone needs the same care. And when a crisis happens for someone, they don't care whether the paramedic is a Republican or the physician is a Democrat — they just want to make sure they're going to make it home to their family.

Richard Helppie
And I understand you've been doing something around medical debt too. Tell us about that.

Sarah Anthony
This has been a great partnership with the Health and Hospital Association and individual hospitals across the state. We know that so many folks are saddled with medical debt — 700,000 Michiganders right now are struggling with some form of it — and people don't know about the charity care programs that many hospitals have. So we have a bill designed to make sure every individual in need actually understands the value of, and what's available to them through, charity care or financial assistance programs. We also want to make sure medical debt doesn't end up on people's credit reports, so that whether you have the birth of a child or a heart attack, that doesn't spiral into bankruptcy. These are things I'm excited we've worked with the hospital association to get done.

Richard Helppie
Those seem like very valuable and worthwhile things. Any final thoughts you'd like to share with the listeners, readers, and viewers of this podcast?

Sarah Anthony
I'm a hopeful person, so the thing you should know about those medical debt bills is that they're bipartisan and bicameral, which means there are so many folks thinking just like you. Those are the easy ones — finally, we can look for things that don't divide us, but that actually unite us. So I'm excited to get those to the governor's desk this year.

Richard Helppie
Well, I wish you the best of luck on behalf of all of us in the state of Michigan.

Sarah Anthony
Bless you.

Richard Helppie
We've been talking with State Senator Sarah Anthony about healthcare and related issues affecting citizens in the state of Michigan. On behalf of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association and the Common Bridge, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off.