I built a startup from scratch and still nearly died because of a broken healthcare system. That’s why I’m running for Congress

Then, two years ago, a growth started bleeding in my brain.My surgeon told me I had a narrow window — a few months — to get the procedure done or the consequences could be fatal. I had health insurance. Good health insurance, I thought. But my insurer refused to cover the specialist I’d been referred to. For weeks, I fought them — appealing, documenting, re-appealing — while a clock ticked in my skull. 

I eventually had to change my insurance. I got the surgery. I’m here to tell the story. But I spent a lot of time in that hospital bed thinking about how many people don’t survive that fight.

The math no longer adds up for the middle class

I’m a business nerd. I read the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s every week, not to mention Fortune. I understand how capital works, how markets function and how incentives shape behavior. And when I look at the economy we’ve built for the American middle class right now, the math simply doesn’t add up. My own story is evidence of that, but I know I’ve been lucky.

A friend of mine — a constituent in my district — pays $2,800 a month for daycare for her two young boys. That’s more than her mortgage. She and her husband both work. They’re doing everything right. And they’re still getting squeezed from every direction: housing costs that have risen 50% in five years, student loan payments that never seem to shrink, healthcare premiums that climb every January whether you used your plan or not.

This isn’t a failure of individual effort. This is a failure of policy.

Research shows that for every dollar the government invests in universal pre-K, society gets $7 back — in economic productivity, tax revenue and long-term child outcomes. These programs don’t cost us money. They make us money. And yet we can’t find the political will to pass them, because too many people in Washington are more focused on protecting the industries profiting from the status quo than on the families drowning in it.

Small businesses are the real economic engine — so why do we treat them that way?

Here’s something every member of Congress should know, but apparently needs reminding: the new jobs created in this country every month come overwhelmingly from small businesses, not large corporations. Large corporations are currently doing the opposite — slashing headcount and automating away jobs. 

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are the ones hiring, building, and taking risks with their own money. And yet the entire system — access to capital, trade facilitation, regulatory compliance — is tilted toward large incumbents.

Getting a small business off the ground in America still requires a network, luck, and a tolerance for chaos that not everyone has or should need. I was fortunate. I had enough of all three. But I think about the thousands of entrepreneurs who had the idea and the drive and never got the shot — because the system wasn’t built for them. When I get to Washington, I want a seat on the Small Business Committee. Not as a photo opportunity. As someone who has lived this.

The dream is still possible — but only if we fight for it

I’m a Democrat (the only lifelong Democrat in my primary race, actually). But the issues I’m running on — affordability, healthcare access, small business investment, universal childcare — aren’t partisan. When I knock doors in Scottsdale and North Phoenix, I hear from moderate Republicans and independents who are exhausted. They’re not ideologues. They’re parents trying to figure out how to cover daycare. They’re small business owners worried about their employees’ health plans. They’re millennials who missed the housing window and don’t know if they’ll ever own a home.They want their government to work for them. That’s not a radical ask.I started a company because I saw a problem and believed I could fix it. I’m running for Congress for the same reason. The American Dream isn’t dead — but it needs someone in Washington willing to actually defend it.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.