State Rep. Ken Fredette is the former Republican House leader and a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs. He is a colonel in the Maine Air National Guard and lives in Newport.

Healthcare policy is often a place where Republicans and Democrats disagree. That’s healthy in a democracy, where ideas are forced to compete for support and lasting, positive change comes from building broad-based support for ideas.

I’ve served five terms in the Legislature, as Republican House leader and as a member of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee. Addressing access to healthcare and the high cost is an issue we face every year, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

I know firsthand the heartbreak that Alzheimer’s disease brings to families. My mother recently passed away after a long battle with the disease. In her final years, I watched my father, now 87 years old, care for her each and every day. The toll on his own health was evident, yet his devotion never wavered. He was determined to keep her at home, surrounding her with the comfort, dignity and love she deserved.

Alzheimer’s is often described as “the long goodbye.” While that phrase captures the length of the journey, it does not fully convey its cruelty. Alzheimer’s is more like the slow theft of a life — a disease that gradually steals memories, independence, personality and connections to the people who matter most. It robs not only those who suffer from it, but also the spouses, children, relatives and friends who walk beside them every step of the way.

Every family touched by Alzheimer’s understands the profound emotional, physical and financial burdens it creates. That is why continued investment in Alzheimer’s research is so important. Behind every statistic is a family like mine, hoping for better treatments, better care and ultimately a cure that will spare future generations from enduring this devastating disease.

That’s why I support more federal funding for research on Alzheimer’s, especially given that Maine has the largest percentage of senior citizens in the country.

As an advocate for increased support for nursing homes and long-term care facilities, it’s clear that we need a major national effort to attack a healthcare crisis — the diagnosis, treatment and, hopefully soon, the prevention of Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related diseases.

The numbers are staggering, and the impact of families stretches well beyond dollars and cents.

According to the American Alzheimer’s Association, nearly 30,000 Mainers 65 and older are suffering with Alzheimer’s disease. Each case is a personal tragedy that spreads out to affect families, friends and entire communities.

In Maine alone, there are 66,000 caregivers providing support to Alzheimer’s patients, many of them older and in poor health themselves. They are providing 103 million hours of uncompensated care, the equivalent of $3 billion.

It doesn’t have to be this way. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is the co-founder and leader of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease. This bipartisan group works together to advocate for a major investment in fighting this awful disease.

Collins has led a bipartisan coalition in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives to introduce — and fight for — the Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention Act, which would require Medicare to cover FDA-approved early detection screenings.

It’s the kind of action that we need in our fight against a life-draining scourge.

Here’s the thing. There’s a chance to do much more. There’s a confluence with the Make America Healthy Again Movement, the Trump administration’s focus on disease prevention and the broad, bipartisan agreement on the need to make progress against Alzheimer’s.

Now is the time for a major, federally led push against this disease, focused on diagnosis and early detection, education, research and access to cutting-edge and groundbreaking treatments. We know that such a move is good policy. And we know that it’s politically popular.

According to a recent national survey, 79% of registered voters are more likely to back a candidate who prioritized better access to early Alzheimer’s detection, diagnosis and treatment — including 78% of independents. 

An even larger 87% of voters say that fighting Alzheimer’s should be a national priority and that doctors, not insurance companies or Medicare, should decide which Alzheimer’s tests and treatments are best for patients. An incredible 92% of voters back the ASAP Act.

Our country is divided, and partisanship too often stands in the way of significant action, but our country is depending on leaders like Sen. Collins, who have shown that they can work across the aisle and with the president to get things done.

There’s no good reason for our country to wait. Alzheimer’s is a healthcare and budgetary crisis. It pulls families apart, and takes away from patients and their families the one thing that there is never enough of — time.

I’m proud to support Sen. Collins, the work that she does for Maine and our country, and her ability to bring people together to make lives better.

We have a chance right now to begin to turn the tide on Alzheimer’s, and it’s my hope that Congress and the administration can come together — without regard for partisanship or politics — and take action.