Why Our Country Will Be Stronger With Tim Peck In Congress

The above picture was taken in 2018 when there was far more pepper than salt in my beard. Timothy Peck and I we're in DC yet again meeting with a number of House Reps and Senators advancing the RUSH Act (Reducing Unnecessary Senior Hospitalizations) among other telemedicine bills designed to provide access to care to vulnerable populations.?

In all, we met with over four hundred Congressmen and Congresswomen in 2018.?

Everyone got it.?

The bills that we were advancing reduced cost and improved care. It made sense financially. It made sense for patients and their families. And it made sense for doctors, nurses and other caregivers who work with these vulnerable people. It's a better care experience for all.?

The RUSH Act was introduced on August 8, 2018, by Rep. Adrian Smith (R - NE) — the last day of Congress prior to the 2018 election. It had bipartisan support with ten co-sponsors on Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means the two committees of jurisdiction over Medicare in the House.?

We were changing the world. We were creating a better world for nursing home patients.?

And by showing the world that you can deliver remote care that reduces hospitalizations and cares about our vulnerable populations, we were gonna create a better world for ourselves when we get old and for our loved ones and our children when they get old.?

In January of 2019, the government shut down for the longest period in American history. Our fractured political system broke in a way it had never before.?

At that point we had raised $40m for the company that Tim had founded, Call9, which we put to building a solution that reduced hospitalizations from nursing homes by 80% (outlined in this study published by the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine). ?

Tim founded Call9 in 2015 and I joined him in 2016 when he moved the company from Silicon Valley to New York.?

Tim and I had been close friends since seventh grade when we competed for the starting first base job on our middle school baseball team.

In our 20’s, Tim went to NYU Grossman School of Medicine and then served as the Chief Resident in the Emergency Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (his first day in the role he and his team cared for and saved the lives of dozens of Boston Marathon Bombing victims). While there he began developing a cutting edge solution to deliver remote emergency quality care to people in nursing homes. He applied and was accepted into Y Combinator , the famed Silicon Valley technology accelerator, and then he went and lived in a nursing home for three months to better understand the clinical, financial and operational challenges facing nursing homes.?

The nursing home was in New York, so he moved the company to Brooklyn and asked me to join as the Chief of Staff.?

It was and is the chance of a lifetime.

Tim and I worked closely together on investor relations, public relations, and ultimately government relations.?

We raised the $40m with the belief that if we built the solution Medicare would pay for it. Why wouldn’t they? We saw over 150,000 nursing home patients and saved over $100m to Medicare while vastly improving the care experience.

But political infighting and selfish partisanship prevented any new healthcare bills from being passed in 2019. And without sight lines to reimbursement for the services we were providing our investors lost faith.?

Call9 closed its doors in May of 2019. We had to lay off 100+ of the best colleagues I’ve ever worked with. People with families and responsibilities to put food on the table.?

We lost our jobs and for a moment we lost our dream.

In March of 2020, nine months after Call9 closed its doors, Covid hit. Nursing home patients were getting sick and bouncing back and forth from hospitals. Doctors, nurses and others who work in nursing homes were getting sick.?

People were dying who did not need to die.?

Overnight, Medicare flipped on the reimbursement switch for telemedicine into nursing homes that we had been advocating for for years.?

Thankfully, Tim, myself and many others had worked to put the mechanisms in place so that it could happen. Millions of people’s lives were saved or improved because it did.

The Ask

Tim is a visionary who understands how to align incentives to solve problems that others see as intractable. He is a great man who is also a good, kind, and empathetic man.?

He’s the kind of politician we should all want to represent us.?

We’re hosting two fundraisers for Tim’s campaign this coming weekend in New York. On August 17th from 5-8p at the Sag Harbor Inn, and on August 18th from 5-8p at Andrew Logan Projects in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There will be food, drinks, good people and good conversations at both.?

And if you’re into solving big problems: have I got a crew for you.

If you’re in New York I hope you’ll join, and if you’re not I hope you’ll consider donating at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/in09, learning more at Tim’s website: https://timpeckforcongress.com, or reaching out to me directly.?

Thank you for your time reading this and your consideration of this important cause.