Turek calls for public health insurance option amid cancer crisis

Funding — for research and for Medicaid — is key to addressing Iowa's cancer crisis, Josh Turek, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, said during a roundtable discussion Wednesday in Cedar Rapids.

Turek heard testimonies and fielded policy questions from multiple Iowans — including cancer survivors, caregivers, awareness advocates and researchers — at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network's "Cancer Coffee Chat" at the Shuttleworth & Ingersoll law office.

Iowa has the nation's third-highest cancer rate, according to 2026 data from the American Cancer Society.

Turek began his remarks by highlighting his personal experience with cancer. His grandfather died of pancreatic cancer, which Turek described as "one of the most horrific experiences that I've ever seen someone go through." His father was exposed to Agent Orange while in Vietnam, which led to throat and skin cancers, Turek said.

Most recently, Turek's sister was diagnosed with breast cancer around the time he launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Turek said her private insurance denied her claim for a PET scan to see if the cancer had spread because her cancer was at Stage 2, not Stage 3 or Stage 4.

"I would love to see guardrails on insurance companies because I believe that doctors should be deciding care, not insurance companies," Turek said. In Wednesday's conversation, Turek focused primarily on improving healthcare access in the state, particularly through Medicaid reform, as a means of tackling the cancer crisis. These strategies included:

„• Creating a public option insurance option so no one is forced into financial hardship or to delay care because of a lack of funds.

• „ Improving Iowa's Medicaid reimbursement rates to prevent physicians from leaving the state over low pay and keeping rural hospitals, which serve a large volume of Medicaid patients, open.

„• Cutting away bureaucracy that denies care, like his sister's situation, or privatized Medicaid that Turek tied to longer waitlists and delays in approving mobility devices.

In response to questions from roundtable participants, Turek said he supported increased funding for cancer research.

Turek is a member of the Iowa House Health and Human Services Appropriations subcommittee, and said he would demand to be on the health committee in the U.S. Senate because health is the area he cares about most.

Turek said Iowa's cancer crisis was "largely due" to its water crisis and called for "genuine prevention" by funding water quality sensors, creating more infrastructure to remove nitrate from water, and further incentivizing farmers to plant cover crops and not apply fertilizer to their fields during winter months.

"We have, in this state uniquely, a water quality crisis that is leading to a unique Iowa cancer crisis," Turek said. "I want to address both of those because you can't address one without the other."

Turek pointed to his work in the Iowa Legislature to send $600,000 back to the University of Iowa to fund its water sensor system, which tracks water quality.

Turek said he supported a recently passed state tax on vape products and nicotine pouches. Proceeds from the tax will fund $3 million in pediatric cancer research at the University of Iowa. Though his name was not attached to the bill, he said the bipartisan work he did to move it along was more important than receiving credit.

Ultimately, Turek said, fixing healthcare in Iowa is about funding and priorities.

"Here we are spending a billion dollars a day in (the Iran war), and we're being told that we don't have money for healthcare," Turek said. "To make 110,000 Iowans lose their healthcare (from Medicaid work requirements) and thousands more their basic food assistance just to give tax credits to billionaires — I think that's fundamentally wrong."

Turek is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson.