Dr. Al Olszewski Campaigns in Glasgow

In a Republican three-way, primary race for the governor's seat, Al Olszewski is seeking a way to distinguish himself. "I'm the only veteran in the race," he told the Courier in a sit-down interview.

Finding a way to set himself apart from the other candidates, U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte and Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, will be crucial to the State Senator's campaign in the upcoming months as he plays catch-up in fundraising. Olszewski has raised $32,524 and personally loaned his campaign $100,000, while Fox has $225,541 and Gianforte commands $389,853, including a $50,000 personal loan, based on the State Campaign Finance Report.

As an orthopedist surgeon, Olszewski has focused his public service on healthcare policy, working as an advocate on the state and national levels. As a candidate in the primary race for the U.S. Senate seat in 2018, veterans' healthcare was a central issue. Now, he is attempting to bring his own military service front and center of the campaign. He spoke at length with the Courier about veterans' issues and healthcare in general.

"As I go around and talk to veterans around the state, talk to other veterans, we talk about the issues of suicide, about the issues of substance abuse, about the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, and we work with it," he said of his current campaign outreach. The issue of the Veterans Administration not working for rural areas, particularly those in eastern Montana, continues to be an issue that needs to be addressed, as it was during his campaign for the Senate seat held by Jon Tester.

Olszewski advocates for a best practices approach, combining behavioral health and physical medicine together in the same clinics, to better serve veterans who would benefit from a holistic approach to care and in dealing with depression and suicide. Beyond that, he would like to see the VA integrate with other medical facilities so that veterans could receive health care in clinics like at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital.

Olszewski views the gubernatorial seat as "a very, very powerful bully pulpit" where he can advocate or oppose policies put forth at the federal level. "Really, it's the only true state position you can advocate for the veterans," he explained. "There's only 50 governors in the country and that gives you a standing to be able to speak with the federal government, to be able to speak with the VA."

Beyond veterans, Olszewski says he is "committed to rural health care for ALL Montanans, period." He highlighted his time in the state legislature where he carried legislation that guaranteed over a million dollars each biennium for suicide prevention, including a hotline and work with vets, Native Americans, and Montana youth. He also helped start the psychiatric residency in the Billings Clinic with the hope of expanding that care to rural areas. Noting that student debt is also a factor in health care access and services, he elaborated on his past work, "In 2017, I worked hard to double the loan repayment program for physicians and psychiatrists who would then come to a critical care access hospital. Not to Billings, not to Great Falls, but to Glasgow, to Glendive, to Lewistown."

Olszewski's approach to insurance follows party lines, with the candidate advocating for refundable tax credits over the Medicaid expansion passed by the state this past legislative session. He says healthcare is neither a right nor a privilege, but a service. He told the Courier, "I think anybody would agree that healthcare is a common good and everybody should have access to it to some degree."

When pressed to define what he meant by "to some degree" he seemed to answer from a provider's perspective, rather than from a consumer's, speaking both of different surgery options and his experience as a provider when he was able to write off a person's medical bills as charity. Olszewski drew on his own experience as a provider, sharing anecdotal stories of how his different patients had approached delaying treatment due to deductibles on personal insurance and those who requested everything available when they gained access to Medicaid.

He acknowledged that the current market system had led to a so-called "arms race" between insurance companies and hospitals, between reimbursement rates and pricing. While he has worked as a policy advocate to make healthcare more affordable, most of his discussion centered around the administrative costs of insurance and government regulations rather than on what he would do to ensure Montanans have affordable insurance and healthcare.

His one example of providing healthcare without the burden of bureaucracy or insurance was the time he spent in Port Au Prince, Haiti, after the devastating earthquake. As part of the military's humanitarian response to the crisis, Olszewski deployed to the island to care for children who would have otherwise faced certain death. In that case, the healthcare came without insurance worries. The doctor explained, "We were 100 percent all about the person." There may be lessons to be learned and applied to the American healthcare system from that experience but voters will need to follow Olszewski's campaign to see if those lessons materialize.

On the issue of the American Prairie Reserve, Olszewski plants himself firmly on the side of farmers and ranchers in the area, touting his legislative record, "I helped champion the resolution brought by Dan Bartel [R-HD29] to ask the BLM not to give the American Prairie Reserve any special treatment in what we consider evidence-based grazing practices that have been successful in Montana."

He doubts though, the ability of the state government to deal with "a global movement of a lot of money" being brought into the state to compete against families trying to make a living in Montana. The APR did not take into account the Montana people who are currently working the land, he maintains. Beyond that, he sees Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation as promoting the APR's position over farmers and ranchers. "I think our Montana farmers have gotten the short end of the stick at this point and they feel threatened by that," stated Olszewski.

Placing the issue in the context of the larger debate of public lands and access occurring across the western United States, Olszewski admits he doesn't have a plan, should he be elected governor, for the ongoing conflict on the Hi-Line. "This is an issue we need to come up with a good answer for," he said. "I don't have the perfect answer at this point."

While he does not have a concrete plan for addressing the issue, the candidate says, "We can experiment by trial and error to find what the best way to handle it is and balance it. I'm going to firmly be on the side of my family who are farmers."

In light of the continuing and escalating trade war with China, the Courier asked how the gubernatorial hopeful would seek to improve trade and open up new markets for farmers and ranchers. Olszewski has a bleak outlook on the current market, "Honestly, we're on the verge. Right now, 2019 looks very similar to me to what I saw when I was in college in the early 1980s. We had high costs of creating a product, whether it was wheat or barley or cattle, and the market stunk. My family had a very hard time trying to make it through there. I had some friends that didn't make it through and I think we're on that verge again."

The placarding bill, colloquially called the COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) bill, was introduced by the state senator this year in an effort to promote Montana products in Montana. Though the bill died in committee, Olszewski touts this as an example of the approach he would take as governor. In the process of working on the bill and promoting Montana products, he has talked with people who have tried similar tactics in Wyoming and Colorado who say it doesn't work, yet he remains positive about the potential he sees.

"The first thing is we need to promote Montana products domestically," he says. "We've got a huge market in California. On the coast they're really big about having organic foods. They want to make sure they know where their food came from." In conjunction with using the state executive seat to sell Montana products, Olszewski proposes taking a step back from spending on tourism advertising and place that focus back on agriculture.

Like many opponents of big government who seek public office, Olszewski sees the government as the problem, "The markets, whether it's overseas, tariff wars or whatever it is, the government seems to screw up everything, but you can't take the government completely out of it." He maintains the role of government is to help promote an environment that creates new jobs, saying that it can not make agriculture successful, but it could kill it.

According to a recent article in the Missoula Current, Olszewski has received endorsements and donations from the right wing of the state Republican party. He told that paper, "They wanted someone they could trust in the governor's office, and I'm that someone." That support may prove important in the upcoming months as the candidate trails in both fundraising and in polls released by the Gianforte campaign.