— The Platform —

Indiana deserves care before crisis.
Kirsten will give you the opportunities your family deserves.

  • In 2025, visits to the ER in Indiana rose to 16.8%, while the nation rate is only 1.4%. Indiana’s public health system ranks among the lowest in the country due to a lack of state-level oversight and coordination and chronic underfunding, where rural and less affluent communities suffer the most.

    Healthcare is fundamentally tied to employment, which means people lose their health insurance when they lose their jobs. Meanwhile, small businesses are forced to pay for expensive premiums that corporations are able to subsidize. Basic healthcare should be a human right, not a privilege managed by employers.

    Currently, Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) is only accessible to people 19 to 64 who don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare and are under 138% of the federal poverty level ($22,026 annual income for individuals). This leaves many people without coverage who make too much money to get HIP, but not enough money to afford private health insurance.

    Kirsten will vote to fully fund healthcare services across Indiana and introduce legislation expanding HIP, so that every Hoosier can have health insurance coverage and receive care before they experience a crisis.

    • Allow people over the income limit to buy into the HIP plan (essentially buy insurance through the state) with sliding scale payments.

    • Remove POWER program lockouts due to lack of payment so people have more time to catch up

    • Simplify the sign-up and renewal process as a whole.

    • Increase reimbursement rates for providers so more providers accept it.

  • Right now there are healthcare deserts across Indiana in rural communities and even municipalities. Four rural hospitals have closed in Indiana since 2005, and seven are at immediate risk of closure. More than half of rural hospitals in Indiana do not provide labor and delivery services. Currently, only 77.4% of EMS providers provide 24/7 basic life support coverage, and only 42% provide 24/7 advanced life support.

    Without public funding, hospitals rely on private funds and are forced to cut life-saving services to be deemed profitable. Kirsten will introduce legislation that requires hospitals be maintained in every county with the state, providing a minimum percent of its budget to equitably fund these hospitals. This funding would include not only life-saving care, but essential services like maternal and pediatric care.

  • When hospitals close, the community loses access to OBGYN services. Twenty-three Indiana counties are considered maternal healthcare deserts as of 2025, which increases the likelihood of preterm births, infant mortality, birth defects in these areas, while also worsening prenatal care. According to a 2023 report, 15.5 % of birthing people don’t receive adequate prenatal care in Indiana.

    90.7% of Hoosiers do not support a full ban on abortion. Full bans have led to a 5.6% increase in infant mortality rates (478 deaths). Maternal mortality rose 56% in Texas following its abortion ban, with 95% of the deaths being white women. Black mothers were 3.3x as likely to die as white mothers in those areas.

    Kirsten will reverse the abortion ban in Indiana in addition to introducing legislature to provide maternal healthcare access in all counties across the state.

Healthcare

  • Workers need to be protected from rising costs and corporate exploitation. Walmart is one of the largest employers in the state, and meticulously prevents workers from earning a livable wage so that government programs subsidize Walmart's labor costs. In a 9-state study, Walmart had 14,500 employees who received SNAP benefits and 10,350 employees enrolled in Medicaid. Additionally in 2023, Indiana gave Walmart $17,854,000 in tax credits and rebates (state taxes) and $1,945,250 in property tax abatement (local taxes). Since 1986, IN has given corporations $21,824,280,892 in subsidies, with Amazon receiving the most with $8,388,495,318. These are our tax dollars going to corporations.

    Kirsten will collaborate with community advocates to amplify the needs and priorities of Hoosiers over those of corporate interests. This will include supporting or introducing legislation that:

    • Caps the size of eligible firms to support only small, local business

    • Bans non-disclosure agreements in economic development

    • Bans subsidies for data centers and warehouses

    • Require site selection consultants to register as lobbyists

    • Makes the application and approval process transparent

    • Gives schools veto power

    • Eliminates the “Dark Store Theory” loophole

  • Indiana has the 14th most regressive state and local tax system in the country, leading to large income disparities. We also have the 5th highest tax rate for the lowest 20% of earners .

    A progressive tax rate is where upper-income households pay a larger share of their income than lower income families. Kirsten would work with experts to re-imagine how Indiana’s tax structure can benefit the public over corporations through progressive tax structures.

  • Under Indiana’s current definition, any business that has 150 or fewer employees for at least 50% of the calendar year (working days) is considered a small business and receives all the same benefits. However, smaller businesses continue to struggle to compete with larger ones under this definition.

    Kirsten would adopt a tiered system of classification similar to Georgia in order to provide small businesses the appropriate tax breaks, contracting opportunities, and support programs.

End Corporate Greed

  • This summer will mark 17 years since the last increase to minimum wage (the longest period in history without an increase). In Indiana, take home pay would be $1,160 a month. The average rent is $1,100-$1,400. Research has consistently shown that increasing the minimum wage is a powerful tool in making the economy more equitable without causing job loss. Kirsten will raise the minimum wage to the minimum required to live with zero children, $22.

  • In the private sector, 12% of employees do not have access to PTO. Among the lowest 10% of earners, 47% do not have access to PTO. The United States is the only high-income country without guaranteed PTO. This is despite it improving productivity, engagement in work, and preventing contagion and injuries at work. Kirsten will require employers to provide 1 hour of PTO per 30 hours worked, including independent contractors.

  • Right to work laws are anti-labor laws in disguise. Working people in lower union dense states have lower wages and sub-par workplace. States with collective-bargaining freedom have higher wages, greater health insurance coverage, better retirement security, more investment in education and worker training, fewer on the job fatalities, faster growing economies, less consumer debt, higher life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, and broader civic and political engagement. As a representative, Kirsten would empower the working class by overturning “Right to Work”.

Labor

  • The average parent pays over $8,500 a year in childcare for one child. New Mexico offers universal child care as of 2025, regardless of income. Supporting working parents strengthens communities and helps children grow and learn in safe, nurturing environments. Kirsten would write legislature to create a similar program that allows parents to choose what works best: centers, home-based providers, language immersion, or faith based programs. This would be done by expanding the child-voucher program to everyone with a child 5 or younger.

  • Indiana does not provide enough funding for public schools. Additionally, it requires school districts to share property taxes with charter schools, publicly funded (privately ran) entities. We also recently raised the income allowance for voucher programs to allow millionaires and billionaires to receive subsidies for private school tuition. Indiana is currently ranked 37th in the nation for per student spending. Kirsten would abolish the choice scholarship program that diverts public funds to charter and private schools. This would stop the diversion of taxpayer dollars from public schools and support public education.

    Indiana teachers base pay is currently $40,000 and the average starting salary is $48,129. Kirsten would introduce legislation that would raise the base pay to $60,000. Tuition reimbursement options would be made available to teachers willing to commit to teaching in public schools.

    Kirsten would work to fully fund public schools with equitability distributed resources, strong after-school programs, mental health counselors and nurses, compliant and effective class sizes, and integrated student bodies.

  • The leading cause for SNAP fraud is scant protection around benefit cards, not intentional fraud. The cards are vulnerable to skimmers and phishing attacks. A switch to chip-enabled cards would allow greater security. Indiana needs to switch to chip cards to protect families who rely on these benefits.

    Research is mixed about if restricting SNAP purchases improves diet quality and health. What is not mixed, is that punishing SNAP recipients raises prices of groceries ($1.6 initially and $759 million each year after). It stops parents from buying their child a birthday cake. It stops diabetics from getting sugary foods that easily raise their blood sugar.

    SNAP does not take into account the related costs of buying and cooking food like housing, utilities, etc. When families make more money, they lose benefits but don’t make enough to make up the difference.

    Kirsten would overturn harmful legislature that reduces SNAP recipients access to food. She would support legislation to base SNAP benefits on the cost of healthy meals, raise the income limit to 200% of the federal poverty line, and provide accommodations for families with unique needs (i.e. dietary requirements, medical issues, etc.).

Children & Education

  • Indiana metro areas rent has increased over 30% between 2020 and 2023. In 2021, Indiana prohibited local regulations on leasing terms, fees charged by landlords, or requirements that renters are made aware of their rights. Kirsten would abolish this legislation that limits local control so local government can enact rental control and freezes. Additionally, she would support legislation to limit rent increases to 5% plus inflation or 10% (whichever is lower).

  • Townships have slowly been dismantled by larger government entities, taking power away from local communities. Kirsten would support legislation that reorganizes townships to have power, and support, that impacts their local community:

    • Keep township assistance local and accessible through at least 2 ways to access them

    • Modernize township assistance through creation of a statewide shared intake system that routes people to the correct township, standardizes forms and eligibility, and build referral partnerships

    • Create a county shared service center that townships can opt into or enroll in if they fall behind on compliance. This would cover administrative things like payroll, accounting, required reporting, etc.

    • Create an accountability and support system. This would include technical assistance and training, temporary final support, and reporting support.

    • If fire and EMS are tied to township existence, there should be state or county funding to maintain these services so low-income communities are not excluded from emergency services

  • If a project is going to pull a lot of water or energy, the public should know the source, expected withdrawals, seasonal peaks, and what will happen in different conditions. Kirsten would support legislation that:

    • Puts a freeze on data centers until routine water impact reviews are established

    • Additional drainage and runoff protections are created

    • Domestic wells and agricultural operations are protected by groundwater monitoring, clear dispute resolution, and guardrails

    • A process is established for community members to have a say in the creation of the proposed data center

    • A process is created to improve the energy grid to support the proposed data center with the cost burden placed on the builders

    • Legislation is passed protecting agricultural land

  • Public owned grocery stores are operated by the government for the benefit of the general public. The government already owns and manages grocery stores through commissaries, supermarkets that provide affordable groceries to servicemembers. Because public grocery stores are for the comm unity, not profit, they are able to offer lower prices for customers. Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Wisconsin currently operate public grocery stores.

Return Power to Local Government

  • Kirsten would write legislation to create and fund the Department of Community Safety. The DOCS would ease the burden on first responders by integrating social workers to provide preventative services. Officers, firemen, and EMS are not trained to deal with mental health and addition to the same degree as social workers. The DOCS would work with local communities to put social workers where they would best fit the community and provide prevention resources.

  • Indiana ranks 5th nationally for rates of domestic violence with 40% of women experiencing intimate partner violence in their life. In 2025, 1,848 survivors were served through domestic violence services with 1,154 receiving housing. There were 123 tracked unmet requests for service, however, this does not reflect every need.

    Kirsten has worked intimately in domestic violence in Indiana and has seen first hand the challenges survivors face. This includes driving a survivor over an hour one way to bring a survivor between a shelter and work because nothing was available in the region. She will ensure equitable funding provided to each county to include a shelter program, or temporary housing program.

  • There is a difference between sex work (an adult consensually offering sexual services in exchange for something of value) and human trafficking (an individual or group uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel another into some kind of labor, including sex acts).Adults and children trapped in abusive working situations are ignored and receive little support or protection. Arrests of adults engaged in consensual sex work grossly inflate the perceived rate of sex trafficking, denying resources to the vast majority of victims who are trafficked into other industries

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, the World Health Organization, and many other human rights groups have come out in support of the decriminalization of consensual sex work in order to address human trafficking worldwide. In areas where sex work has been decriminalized, sex workers and trafficking survivors are afforded human rights. Additionally, trafficking, exploitation, and violence against women decreased sharply. Kirsten will push legislation that decriminalizes sex work to protect survivors of human trafficking in Indiana. 

  • In 2010, Indiana taxpayers spent $38.5 million enforcing cannabis prohibitions, including $19 million in policing costs, $13.9 million in judicial and legal expenditures and $5.6 million in correctional expenditures. Indiana has an incarceration rate of 721/100,000. The US Average is 614/100,000 and the next highest rate is the U.K. with 144/100,000. 

    Decriminalization of low level possession and consumption of all illicit drugs reduces people arrested and incarcerated, increases drug treatment, reduces criminal justice costs, redirected law enforcement resources to serious and violent crime, diminishes unjust racial disparities, minimizes social exclusion of people using drugs (creating a climate where they are less fearful of seeking and accessing treatment or using harm reduction services), improves relationships between law enforcement and the community, and protects people from wide ranging and debilitating consequences of criminal conviction. Additionally, Indiana would make ~$171 million in annual revenue from legalization of marijuana. Kirsten would write legislation to decriminalize all illicit substances and legalize marijuana in Indiana.

Safety

  • Private prisons are financially incentivized to keep people in prison. Prisons spend millions lobbying for punitive justice policies over rehabilitation efforts to increase reliance on prisons. Private prisons are not cheaper and do not provide better services. Public prisons have less drugs, less sexual misconduct, and are safer.

    Kirsten would introduce legislation to phase out private prisons in Indiana, provide funding for reentry support and services, employment, education, all using evidence based practices

  • Prisoners in Indiana are currently paid a quarter or a less per hour, despite the federal minimum wage being 7.25. The average prisoner would have to work for a month afford a bar of soap, deodorant, laundry soap, and lotion. This system turns prisons into modern day slavery. Using prison labor prevents fair competition for companies and provides the same product. Prisons lease people to companies like McDonalds, Best Western, and Bama Budweiser for cheap labor. While prisoners working outside the prison make at least $7.25, 40% is taken by the prison in fees.

    If prisons were paid at least minimum wage, they would be able to pay retribution to victims, save for post-incarceration, and pay child support if they have children. Kirsten will support legislation to pay prisoners a fair wage.

Dignity in Corrections